Average Personnel Costs are Still Rising in the City of Coral Gables

I have taken staff costs and personnel numbers from estimated budget costs and historical information from the City of Coral Gables, 2010-2011 Budget Estimate [be warned this is a large download–you can request a hard copy of the document from the Finance Department] .

Here are some of the main conclusions:

• The year 2007-2008 was the high water mark with 875 personnel in the City of Coral Gables.  The staff number for the new budget 2010-2011 is estimated at 791.  This is a decline of 9.6% in four years–hardly a dramatic decline;
• The total personnel costs declined by 6% in the same period;
• The average position cost increased by 4% ;
• Thus average personnel costs are rising because the city is reducing the lowest paid staff for the most part.

Until the average costs start falling will the city get a handle on its biggest problems–shocking employee benefits.

None of Coral Gables’ Economic Sectors are Expected to Recover Soon

Isn’t it time for someone in Coral Gables to make a city-wide effort to promote new and more dynamic leading sectors.  All of our main sectors are in the “doldrums”.  Will Coral Gables stay in the doldrums for a long time–I guess that is highly likely.

“We’ve got a lot of stuff going for us,”…

“but construction and real estate will be in the doldrums for quite some time.”

“We will be dragged down by the problems in real estate and construction,”…

“Other areas that are lagging include financial institutions, where there has been a lot of consolidation, and also professional services such as attorneys, accountants and engineers. The volume of their business based on employment is still in negative territory.”

via Pulling out of the downturn fastest: healthcare, tourism, education, government.

Coral Gables is Not Immune from the Foundering of the Middle Class

These are international views of what is happening in the US.  Coral Gables cannot “power ahead” in this kind of world in which the middle class is reducing is standard of living on a grand scale.

Growth rates are stuttering and a recovery is struggling to take hold. It may even now be showing signs of going backwards again, as countries such as Germany start to power forward. Joblessness has taken hold in America, with the numbers of long-term unemployed reaching levels not seen since the Depression of the 1930s. The figures are frightening and illustrate a society that remains in deep trouble.

…

America appears to be a society splitting down the centre, shattering the middle class that long formed the cultural bedrock of the country and dividing it into a country of haves and have-nots. “A once unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal,” warned Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman in a recent New York Times column. Or, as Steven Green, an economics lecturer at Baylor University, put it to the Observer: “We are really in a tough spot right now.”

via Jobless millions signal death of the American dream for many | World news | The Observer.