This article was published in Jun 10th, 2015
f you live in Florida, then you know that our wonderful state isn’t known for its high paying jobs. Indeed, all you have to do is look at how much our teachers are paid to realize the meaning of what is NOT a high paying job. And it’s not just the teachers…
That’s why I was amazed after reading a story reported in the Sunsentinel about a small business owner who his employees a rise of 35 percent to 50 percent.
“I had one employee who was almost full time, and I was paying her $10.50 an hour. This was disgusting.” Andrew Green, the owner told the Sunsentinel!!!
And so he gave one of his employees nearly double of what she was paid before the rise (from $230 per week to $537 per week) and a warehouse worker an equally impressive rise from $500 to $730 per week. As for his operations manager, the pay rose to $800 from $600 .
Florida is a wonderful place to live in. But it could do with a more appropriate pay structure, which would boost the economy and make a whole lot of workers a lot happier, and a lot more productive.
Want to know how low pay jobs are affecting the web design industry in Florida? Well, here is one example, out of many which illustrate this point. I was once approached by a prospective customer (based in Fort Lauderdale) about a complex customized design his new company needed and they were shopping around. They had gotten quotes from just about every web developer on the planet and wanted to know if I could match and possible better them.
After a lot of back and forth, we decided to have a face to face meeting and I discovered that wed design agencies based in the South Florida area were quoting prices that were nearly $10.000 lower than those based out of state. (I am not even talking about New York where some quotes were over $50.000 higher)
Would Florida Low Pay Job structure be the reason for that kind of discrepancy? Quite possibly.
Mr. Green’s decision to give his employees a substantial rise means that his own profits will be lowered by 12.5 percent . What do you think? A small price to pay for a small business employers or the recipe for disaster because the only way a business can make up for this type of reduction in profit is by way of hiking prices up?
And what happened with the client who was shopping around? I excused myself from this particular deal!