The family-owned Zeppole Baking Co. in Boise did record business last year. The bakery now has 27 employees — another starts in about a week — up from 21 a couple of years ago.
The company’s task now is to keep those employees from leaving Zeppole for its competition, especially as a handful of new grocery stores with bakeries arrive in the Treasure Valley. Zeppole just lost a baker to Rosauers supermarket, which opens in Meridian this spring. Natural Grocers just opened in Boise.
So Zeppole has been giving more performance-based raises in the past year as business picks up. Some employees have received more than one raise in a year.
That seems to be the trend for many industries in Idaho. As the economic recovery grows more robust, employers are paying more, giving workers more hours and bringing back some benefits.
NEW GROWTH
Private-sector wages in Idaho went up 3.6 percent in 2011 after three straight years of less than 2 percent increases, according to the Idaho Department of Labor.
Between 2008 and 2009, private wages barely budged, going up about a fifth of a percent.
Department spokesman Bob Fick said fatter private-sector paychecks aren’t necessarily because people have been getting raises. Instead, employers have been restoring hours of work.
But for the first time in years, a rising number of local employers has been asking to survey the wage-and-benefits landscape, a local human resources company says.
“In the last year and a half, we’ve done more compensation and benefits projects than in the previous 3› years,” said Sarah Stevens, senior human resources consultant for AmeriBen/IEC Group in Boise. “Things are moving in a positive direction, and clients want to make sure their benefits and pay are competitive.”
NEW JOBS, NEW WAGES
After Idaho’s long, job-killing economic drought, new employment is blooming again. That hasn’t affected salary data much yet, since job growth “just started occurring in the last six to eight months, and it’s been fractional,” Fick said.
Government jobs still pay better than private-sector jobs. The average annual wage for Idaho’s private employees was $35,275 last year; it was $43,182 for government employees. The average hourly difference was $3.80.
That’s nothing new. Private industry has paid about 81 to 84 percent of government wages since 2007, according to state data. But the gap has widened slightly in the past year. The average public-sector worker earned 4.5 percent more in 2011, almost a percentage point higher than the average private worker.
Government wages helped carry Idaho through the recession while private-sector employers were laying off people, Fick said.
Some industries are still struggling just to survive, much less give raises or add hours for workers. In residential construction, for example, one of every two jobs in the Valley disappeared after 2006, while others survived on lower pay. Jobs tied to construction have lost income on average.
About 45 percent of the electricians in southwestern Idaho — about 660 people — are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 291. The union has held onto its health insurance and pension benefits, but workers have taken wage cuts of up to 20 percent, said Aaron White, business manager.
“Everybody has cut down on their margins to stay viable,” White said. “I think as the market improves, we’ll see less and less of that ... but it’s going to be determined by how quickly things turn around.”
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