University Daily Kansan / Thursday, May 3, 1990
7C
Hometowns
Continued from p. 1c
"When a company comes from out of town, for every 100 jobs, they need a job pool of 400." Warren said.
John Rogers, executive vice president of the Montgomery County Action Council, said that four months ago, a major poultry processor was considering building a new plant in Coffeville or Independence, two Montgomery County towns in southeast Kansas.
For the 1,500 jobs the company would create, its managers wanted a labor pool of 6,000 people from which to choose, Rogers said. Applicants would have to be within a 30-mile radius of the new plant.
"We couldn't deal effectively with a company dealing with more than 500 jobs," he said. "There is not reason to think we could provide them with the quality of the numbers in our workforce that they would require."
The deal is not dead, Rogers said, but there has to be a level of comfort for an industry to come in.
Even smaller businesses contemplating development find it difficult to find sufficient workers in rural towns. The same area also is competing for a smaller service business that could create about 200 jobs, Rogers said.
Nevertheless, this business wants a guarantee that workers will be available before the company is built. A provision allows the firm to break its property lease if the labor pool is not during a one-year span, Rogers says.
And the company will receive this
guarantee, although Rogers said he was not aware of any other deal such as this being used.
"It will be extremely expensive if the company makes the wrong move," Rogers said. "You have to have the numbers of people to attract industry. You have to have jobs in that. That's the critical element."
Skilled worker loss
Furthermore, it is the skilled workers who are migrating out of the rural communities, and myrna Buran, manager of the Employment Training Office in Chanute, a southeast Kansas town of about 8,000.
"Absolutely, we're being affected," Burton said. "Presently, we have some job orders for some people and we know that we do not have people to fill the orders."
Burton said she could put five or six industrial engineers, pipe fitters and welders to work, although she could not find workers with adequate skills. The workers who remain in the area have few skills, she said.
"I truly believe wages have a lot to do with it," she said. "We've got to do something about our wage scale."
According to statistics from 1983 to 1988, the average job wage for metropolitan county residents was nearly $5,000 more than for non-metropolitan county residents. For example, in 1988, the average job wage for a Johnson County resident was $21,500. A resident in Neosho County in southeast Kansas received an average of $15,000.
back, we've got to have higher wages and attract some skilled people," Burton said.
Chip Whelen, director of public affairs for the Kansas Medical Society, said it was harder to attract professionals in rural communities.
"There just isn't a sufficient demand for patient services to maintain a practice in many rural communities," he said.
"Before southeast Kansas comes
Possible steps
Therefore, some rural communities, such as St. Paul, are considering ways to deal with the declining population and the declining labor force.
Larry Smith, Michelle Smith's uncle and lifetime resident of St. Paul, said, "St. Paul is on the low side of being stable, and it is critical that we don't lose any more people. It is like a car on the edge of a cliff. If it goes any further, we won't be able to save it."
St. Paul residents are researching the construction of a retirement center that would create about 35 jobs and would fit the town's aging population. More than half of the St. Paul community is more than 50 years old, he said.
"Rather than bringing in a smokestack industry, why not have another industry that would do two things: provide jobs and also cater to a need that has been expressed in St. Paul?" Larry Smith said.
Charles Krider, director of the KU Business Research Institute for Public Policy and Business Research, is a professor of social sciences that would fit with the needs of
Between 1980 and 1988, 92 of Kansas' 105 counties had more people move out than in, but the other 13 counties had more people move into them. Twenty-six of the counties had more than 10 percent of their populations leave during the eight-year period.
1980-88 Net migration in Kansas
the community, such as the retirement center, would be the key to survival for rural towns.
Another town using this survival technique is Lindsburg, a town of about 3,300 south of Salina. The residents of Lindsburg are developing tourism based on their Swedish heritage, Krider said.
rural towns probably will not be able to overcome the labor-force problems.
Stephen Kline / KANSAN
"The odds are against them," he said.
Michelle Smith said that she would not rule out moving back to St. Paul later in her life but that at age 22, her towns seemed more attractive.
Rural survival?
"There's no way I could find a job in St. Paul. It's so unrealistic,"
Nevertheless, Warren said, many
Michelle Smith said. "It still would be hard even to get a job in southeast Kansas. The pay in southeast Kansas is distribution from the Kansas City area."
Her family was not surprised about her decision to leave her hometown after graduation, she said, although they are not happy about it.
Krider said. "If jobs were to come, people would stay. Students need to perceive that there are opportunities for them."
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