Report highlights a labor issue for the
Berkshires - and it's not a lack of jobs
Posted Sunday, June 4, 2017 7:30 pm
The folks who are entering the workforce grew up in households that may have felt the negative
impact of the recession 10 years ago, so they’re not thinking about a long-term investment in a house
or a career because they didn’t see that pay off for their parents.”
PETER STASIOWSKI, communications director of Interprint
By Tony Dobrowolski, [email protected]
PITTSFIELD — Unemployment dropped dramatically in the Berkshires last year, while average
weekly wages rose.
Sounds good, right?
But there's a downside: Those factors also helped create a smaller labor force, which has made it
harder for county employers to find skilled local employees to fill jobs, according to a new report.
This condition has made labor market conditions in Berkshire County "extremely tight" and has left
employers experiencing "conditions they have not see in over 15 years," according to "What's
Happening in Berkshire County?," an annual review of labor market conditions prepared for the
Berkshire County Regional Employment Board.
Compiled by retired economist Bob Vinson, of Plymouth, the report is based on industry data
between the second quarters of 2015 and 2016, and labor force and unemployment information from
the fourth quarters of 2015 and 2016.
"You're in a situation now where for the first time in recent memory the biggest challenge is trying to
get bodies to fill jobs instead of just getting jobs," Vinson said. "The population issues are becoming
more pronounced; the labor force actually shrunk during the period of this report.
"If you're not getting enough labor force growth, you're not getting enough people to fill positions,"
he said.
The number of unemployed Berkshire residents fell to 2,018 people — a drop of 1,354 — during the
report's time span, while the jobless rate dropped from 5.2 percent to 3.1 percent (the seasonally
unadjusted unemployment rate in the Berkshires dropped as low as 2.9 percent last November). Both
figures were the lowest in Berkshire County since 2000.
But as more positions were filled in the Berkshires, the county's total labor force failed to add
replacements. The Berkshire labor market actually contracted by 806 residents, a 1.2 percent
decrease. During that same time span, 25,700 additional residents entered the labor force in
Massachusetts, an increase of 0.7 percent.
"In Berkshire County you have very little movement in and out of the county," Vinson said. "For the
most part you really have the most self-contained labor market in Berkshire County in the state
outside of the Cape. The issue now becomes 'What do we do to bring more people into the labor
force?' That's a real challenge given that the population is old."
Jonathan Butler, the president and chief operating officer of 1Berkshire, the county's leading
economic development agency, agrees that the Berkshires "have a gap right now between the
employment needs of employers and the available workforce to fill those positions."
As an example, Butler cited General Dynamics Missile Systems in Pittsfield, which has been
struggling to fill between 100 to 175 open positions for the last three years.
"I think that's an accurate observation that he's making with that data," Butler said, referring to
Vinson's report. "There's a lot of work being done on that right now at Berkshire Community
College, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and the Berkshire County Regional Employment
Board to really shine a light on that so that the state can accelerate our efforts in a more focused way
so career paths are readily accessible."
The lack of a skilled Berkshire County workforce isn't a new phenomenon. Butler refers to the
current situation as an "evolving version of the same thing."
"It keeps changing a little bit," he said. "A lot of our companies are innovating. Onyx [Specialty
Papers], Interprint, Crane [Currency] are making world class products right now. As they have, the
skill sets have changed."
Peter Stasiowski, Interprint's communications director, said the current Berkshire labor markets
conditions are due to a "bit of a perfect storm" that includes demographic shifts, new state regulations
such as the raising of the minimum wage, and employees moving from job to job, company to
company, considered to be common a trait of the millennial generation.
"The folks who are entering the workforce grew up in households that may have felt the negative
impact of the recession 10 years ago, so they're not thinking about a long-term investment in a house
or a career because they didn't see that pay off for their parents," he said.
"It's certainly more challenging today even than it was three or four years ago," Stasiowski said.
"We've talked to our peers in the community and other companies cry on each others' shoulders
because they're experiencing the same things that Interprint is."
But not every Berkshire County employer has had problems hiring because of the skills gap.
"We have not really seen it to be true," said Patricia Begrowicz, the co-owner and president of Onyx
Specialty Papers in Lee. "We have a couple of different types of jobs, entry-level manufacturing and
engineering. So whenever I hear about tight labor markets I hear about General Dynamics and from
that standpoint we're not challenged in engineering. We have had some challenges with entry-level
manufacturing. Quite frankly, a lot of people can't pass the drug test.
"I do believe some companies are having a hard time filling positions, but the devil's in the details,"
she said. "It's getting people with college degrees to come to the Berkshires where the rates of pay
are very low. I'd have to look at the data more, but that's the experience that we've been having."
On the plus side, average weekly wages in Berkshire County increased by $42, or 5.2 percent, led by
the manufacturing sector, where the average weekly salary jumped a hefty 14.5 percent to $177. The
average weekly wage increased by just $21, or 1.7 percent, in Massachusetts during the same time
span last year. But at $843, the average weekly wage in the Berkshires still remains far below the
state average of $1,232.
The increase in Berkshire wages suggest that local employers in some industries have recognized the
need to raise wages in order to attract and retain workers, the report states.
At Interprint, the entry level wage was raised to $15 per hour to compensate for the statewide
increase in the minimum wage to $11 per hour.
"As the state regulations have gone up, we've had to sharpen our pencils," Stasiowski said.
The increase in weekly wages can affect a company's bottom line.
"It does," Stasiowski said, "but luckily for us we try and forecast well in advance the impact on our
wages. We have launched some new products over the last three or four years that allowed us to get
into new markets at the beginning of the product life cycle.
"We're not trying to squeeze the same amount of juice out of the same orange," he said. "We have a
lot of oranges now."
Business Editor Tony Dobrowolski can be reached at 413 496-6224.