Workers' salaries beginning to move up
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Claudette Miller has seen salaries for legal secretaries creep up in the past 18 months from $36,000 per year to as much as $40,000.
"Nobody's going, 'Whooooo, that's horrible,' " said Miller, placement manager/executive recruiter for Altres Staffing of Honolulu.
The higher salaries for legal secretaries may be the first signal that employers are starting to pay more to attract skilled workers, Miller said.
As the Islands enjoy one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country — it has hovered around 3 percent — job fair organizers, economists and job-placement professionals have been predicting that businesses may have to offer higher salaries to keep their positions filled.
It hasn't happened on a wide scale yet.
But Judy Bishop, the general manager for CTA Staffing, believes other professions will start increasing salaries within the next three months — if Hawai'i's economy keeps humming.
"It is definitely in the works," Bishop said. "They have to. Companies have so many positions unfilled. They can't function, they can't compete. They can't operate with all of these positions open."
Companies such as First Hawaiian Bank are constantly searching for potential employees, even recruiting at University of Hawai'i basketball and volleyball games.
"This is a really tough market," said Sheila Sumida, First Hawaiian's executive vice president of human resources, who needs to fill about 20 teller, clerical and management openings.
First Hawaiian, like other companies, hasn't raised pay in response to the tight job market. But the bank touts its ShareCare program that it developed as an employee incentive in 1988 during Hawai'i's last run of low unemployment.
Through the ShareCare program, First Hawaiian will match an employee's childcare or elder care costs up to $2,000 per year.
"We're here to be competitive," Sumida said. "We have to be competitive."
Miller, of Altres, believes that most employers have yet to catch up with the realities of Hawai'i's tight job market and the difficulties of finding workers with the right experience and training.
"They're still thinking they have this huge pool of candidates and they don't," Miller said. "You feel for the employers because they aren't able to get the exact type of people they're looking for, like good, highly skilled legal secretaries, who are just very hard to find."
Higher salaries will probably only be offered for skilled positions that are in high demand, Bishop said.
"Job seekers are very much in the driver's seat," she said.
Staffing agencies such as Altres are now offering $10 more per hour for temporary, registered nurses who work on contracts that generally run from 13 to 26 weeks, said Sue Martin, general manager for Altres' medical division.
The salaries of so-called "agency nurses" went up about 18 months ago along with other temporary healthcare workers, such as nursing assistants, radiologists and speech and physical therapists.
"We also pay healthcare professionals housing when they relocate to Hawai'i and we've started paying their travel expenses, which is something we haven't done in the past," Martin said. "There's a shortage in healthcare for nurses and other workers both here and on the Mainland. So you have to do a little bit more to attract them."
Although businesses are still reluctant to pay bigger salaries, Martin has seen companies do more to show their appreciation, such as developing employee of the month programs or giving workers their birthdays and anniversaries off.
"In this environment," Martin said, "we can't take any employees for granted anymore."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8085.
