Rebounding: Jobs trickle back after Hurricane Florence

Dec. 08--NEW HANOVER COUNTY -- A "closed for repairs" sign plastered to the door of the Tilted Kilt restaurant on Market Street affirmed what Gabriel Robinson feared -- he was out of a job.

Robinson was a line cook at the restaurant franchise, a job he's had since it opened its doors in front of Walmart four years ago. After Hurricane Florence ravaged the area, he helped with the clean-up effort at the restaurant, and was made aware the business suffered some roof damage and leaks.

Robinson said, however, he was under the impression he could get back to his job -- and his paycheck -- within a few weeks. More than two-and-a-half months after the hurricane, the business remains closed, sending Robinson, unexpectedly, into the job hunt -- something more residents are finding themselves in.

With some businesses still recovering and others closed for good, the job market has seen an influx of people looking to fill temporary lapses in employment or find new jobs.

Despite this being typical in the aftermath of hurricanes, Robinson said it has, undoubtedly, been a challenge.

"Suddenly you don't have a job and don't know when you will," he said. "All I was qualified to do was work in a kitchen. I went and reworded my resume and really had to step out of my comfort zone."

Robinson said he was fortunate in some ways. He was already mulling a career change, but Florence proved to be an unexpected push off the ledge.

"I've been working there for so long, and I was relying on that steady income," he said. "Had this never happened, I might have been stuck there. I had an alleigance to them."

After finding himself in the job pool for the first time in four years, Robinson said most jobs he found were temporary recovery and cleanup work, which did help offset the loss for people.

"That helped a lot of people survive," he said.

Robinson has landed a part-time job with the Brigade Boys and Girls Club, something more in line with what his ideal next career step would be. It's a sign of recovery for Robinson and a step toward normalcy for the job market -- even if it's not quite there yet.

Quick employment recovery?

Adam Jones, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), said he believed the Wilmington region will see job and economic recovery in much the same way as other areas ravaged by storms.

He compared the region's expected recovery to Houston after Hurricane Harvey last year, Baton Rouge after the 2016 floods, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In each case, the cities saw varying spikes in unemployment claims in the weeks after the storm, then leveled out again.

"They all recover relatively quickly," Jones said. "And I think we're going to see that here too."

North Carolina similarly saw a spike in unemployment claims, from 2,174 in the week of the storm to 10,084 claims in the week after the storm, according to the U.S. Employment and Training Administration. Those claims have since leveled out already, with 3,602 people filing for unemployment in the week ending Nov. 10.

"They spiked up in the end of September and they're almost back down to where they were pre-storm," Jones said.

That spike was reflected in the October 2018 unemployment figures released by the state Thursday, which showed the New Hanover County unemployment rate rise from 3.3 percent in September to 3.5 percent a month later. In Brunswick, the rate rose to 4.7 percent from 4.4, and in Pender, it was up to 4.2 percent over Setpember's 3.8.

As a whole, the state's unemployment rate saw a similar spike, from 3.1 percent in September to 3.4 percent in October. It was 4.3 percent in October 2017.

Construction labor woes

Where the comparisons with those other cities diverge, Jones said, will be in construction.

"We'll be slightly different here than Houston or Baton Rouge," he said. "Our construction market and employment were already pretty tight. So unemployment was low and anecdotally you had construction companies talking about having difficulty finding workers and skilled tradespeople, which means we're probably not going to that large of an increase in construction and it's going to be drawn out over a long period of time."

Dave Spetrino, president and CEO of Plantation Building Corp., said the storm's effect on his business has primarily been increased labor costs, as large, national companies swooped in and offered contractors higher wages to do cleanup and demolition work.

"Companies were coming from out of market because they had a captive audience and the work is extremely profitable," he said. "When a guy who was making $15 an hour was suddenly being paid $20 an hour, his new self-worth is $20 an hour."

Spetrino said the storm has exacerbated a problem common in the construction industry.

"Labor is our single biggest challenge," he said. "We don't have young men (graduating from school) saying, 'I want to use my hands.' They're saying they want to work somewhere in the air conditioning and not outside. As a whole, our industry has not been able to attract the workers."

Broken window fallacy

But the leveling off of unemployment and construction does not necessarily mean good news, Jones said.

"That's where you've got to be careful of the broken window fallacy," Jones said. "In terms of looking at the numbers and the amount of activity that takes place, it will probably increase. And that's where some people will say 'There's a bright spot. That's good news.' "

Jones said the broken window fallacy, introduced by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in 1850, is the misplaced belief that economic activity generated from having to make repairs after destruction is a good thing. What that belief ignores, Jones said, is that the money spent on repairing damages could have been spent on new investment or economic activity.

"The downside is that we're replacing items rather than buying new stuff that makes us happy," Jones said.

He said he believes the bright spot in the months after the storm is the "social capital" built from neighbors helping neighbors through a catastrophe. It's something that, through making more and better connections with people, can drive future economic activity, he said.

"We now have a shared experience that we can build on," Jones said.

Short memories

Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said he is concerned that the storm will have a lasting impact on the region's economy, particularly in tourism and local business owners. Since the storm, downtown Wilmington has seen a spike in storefront vacancies.

"The bigger concern we all have ... is what (the storm) has done to our small business community," Saffo said.

During parts of the storm's aftermath, Wilmington essentially became an island after major thoroughfares -- including Interstate 40, U.S. 17 and U.S. 421 -- were closed because of flooding or washouts. Saffo said he is worried that potential visitors would be apprehensive if they believed the city could be cut off, hurting the region's tourism industry in the long term.

"Going forward, the bigger concern I have is what the storm has done to the image of the community," he said. "We'll probably have a better take on that impact in six to eight months when tourism (traditionally) picks up. We'll have to kind of wait and see."

Jones said he didn't believe the mayor needed to worry.

"People's memories are very short. Come May or June when the sun's out in Raleigh, they're going to say, 'Is there a hotel room available in Wilmington,' " he said. "I'm not sure us being cut off is as big a concern to folks outside of here as it is to the folks here in Wilmington."

Jones pointed out that national coverage of hurricanes lasts "a couple of days."

"Where are the tourists coming here from? Somewhere outside of here," he said. "So they're watching here while the storm is blowing and The Weather Channel is here, but once it's gone they're on to something else and they don't pay as much attention to the fact that we're cut off."

Reporter Tim Buckland can be reached at 910-343-2217 or [email protected].

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