Nashville Public Radio, August 29, 2016: Nashville Workers Ask: Why Are Pay And Benefits Lacking in City’s Hiring Boom?

“One answer came from Ken Chilton, assistant professor of public administration at Tennessee State University. He told the gathering that the city’s poverty rate has moved from 13 percent to 19.9 percent since 2000. (See a deeper report on poverty here.) ‘The bulk of the jobs created since 2009 have been $20 an hour and less,’ he said. Chilton focused on a major trade-off: full-time, high-paying manufacturing jobs, at $26 an hour, are less common, and part-time hospitality and food service jobs, at $14 an hour, have increased greatly. (While manufacturing work has been on the rebound since the recession, he said the county’s 80,000 manufacturing jobs is still down compared to 110,000 jobs before the downturn.)”