- [Anita Brown Graham] Coming up on ncIMPACT: Staffing shortages are widespread as workers quit their jobs for better wages elsewhere.

We will learn how some communities are working to solve the labor shortage by offering living wages.

- [Male Narrator] ncIMPACT is a PBS North Carolina production in association with the University of North Carolina School of Government.

Funding for ncIMPACT is made possible by.

- [Female Narrator] Changing the course of people's lives, that's the impact UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine work to deliver every day.

Our 40,000 team members across the state of North Carolina are committed to caring for you, our patients and communities, as well as an educating the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Individually, we can do a little, but collectively, we can do a lot to create impact.

- Welcome to ncIMPACT.

I'm Anita Brown-Graham.

The debate over the minimum wage often obscures the day-to-day reality of earning a living wage.

A living wage is the income of family requires, not only for the basics of food and shelter, but also to achieve financial stability and independence for things like buying a house or saving for the future.

Not earning a living wage is an issue that affects nearly half of the US population.

A recent study found 44% of US workers are employed in jobs that pay annual wages that do not meet the level of a living wage.

ncIMPACT's Evan Howell went to meet with a small business owner, working to be part of a solution.

[axe thumping] - [Evan] Chef Roberto Copa Matos was just six and living in rural Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, and that's when they lost ownership of the family bakery.

- Born and raised in under a communist system, communist regime, and I know what it means to work for a whole month for $10 a month.

- [Evan] He immigrated to Miami in 2002, he says, for more political freedom and to build a life, he says, wouldn't have otherwise been possible.

Today, he and his wife own Copa, a farm to table restaurant in downtown Durham.

- We grew up to understand that it is very important for us, not only to follow the regulations and the laws, but also to think about our community and our colleagues and how is it that they can pay their bills?

- [Evan] Matos says he and his neighbors have all struggled at one time or another to live under the federal $7.25 minimum wage and less.

He says increasing it to $15 an hour pays off for the happier work environment and higher productivity.

- They do not have to be constantly thinking how they're going to be paying their bills or solving a problem that their family or their friends are going to have.

- [Evan] Copa is part of the Durham Living Wage Project, a group of more than 140 small businesses committed to the effort.

To be certified, a business must agree to pay an hourly wage that amounts to $15 an hour.

So how do customers know they're supporting a business that pays a living wage?

Copa does this by adding a visible line item, 20% gratuity on the receipt called a fair wage charge.

- And I think it is nothing but fair.

It allows everybody to see what's going on in the industry.

- [Evan] He says by making the living wage designation obvious, helps build support within the community and will ultimately encourage others to follow suit.

- It brings to light that there are differences between how businesses are run.

And if you really want to have a healthy restaurant and service industry in your community, you should be thinking that those working there, those offering those services, also need to earn a living wage.

- [Evan] Matos believes paying a living wage is a trend that will grow over time, but he says until the public fully understands how some of their neighbors still struggle in silence, the scales will never tip in favor of the class.

For ncIMPACT, I'm Evan Howell.

- Joining me now is Paige Ouimet.

Paige is a professor of finance at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC Chapel Hill.

Paige, people sometimes get confused with this terminology.

What is a living wage?

And why is it important for us to think about that?

- So a living wage is gonna be defined as the income that an individual's part of a household is going to need to be able to meet their basic needs.

So these are gonna be things like rent, healthcare, childcare, housing utilities.

And so obviously this is very important.

We are a wealthy country and for people who are working, they should be able to afford their basic needs and not feel that they're in a situation where they're having to trade off something like filling a prescription or being able to pay their rent.

- Coming out of the pandemic, we've seen ongoing labor shortages, perhaps historic in some industry sectors.

This has been true, especially in lower wage industries that were already hard hit by the pandemic.

Many argue that now what we're seeing is wage inflation.

What does that mean?

And why should we be concerned about that?

- So I think there's not one easy answer to what's going on in the labor market currently.

We are seeing some increase in wages, particularly among low wage professions.

I'm not sure I would see this as a concern as of now.

I think what we're seeing is sort of long overdue wage increases in these areas.

For a lot of individuals, the pandemics sort of offered them a chance to reset.

So here, you know, I'm going, I'm working my job, I'm doing this, and all of a sudden, I'm out of work for a period of time.

And they reconsider and they think through their other options.

And so for a lot of people, they're sort of thinking, look, you know, I'm gonna wanna be paid more in order to come back and to be able to doing the same job.

And so we are seeing some upward wage pressure.

- And so this reset then is a permanent reset?

Would that be your... - [heaves] Probably not.

Mainly 'cause people are gonna need to be able to pay their bills.

So I think people have a period of time now where there's sort of some more flexibility, particularly because of some of the pandemic measures the government took, but I expect this is gonna be short-lived and that people are gonna feel more pressure to go back to jobs.

And hopefully again, they're gonna be able to find the jobs they want, but I'm assuming over time, this sort of increase in wage will start to slow down.

- Thank you so much, Paige.

We'll come back to you in the panel.

Numbers from the US Department of Labor revealed seven out of 10 workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage were employed in the leisure and hospitality industry.

In fact, these workers were employed almost entirely in restaurants, bars, and other food services.

ncIMPACT reporter, Melody Hunter-Pillion, introduces us to a program in Winston-Salem.

Here, they are cooking up new ingredients to help minimum wage workers become living wage earners.

Melody, tell us more.

- The Providence Culinary Training Program at Second Harvest Food Bank in Winston-Salem offers training to elevate the skills and the wages of food service workers.

Low wages and job insecurity make the food service industry a significant segment of the working poor.

The Providence Program provides intensive training, internships, and jobs with partner restaurants and other businesses.

The goal is to give folks the opportunity to move up in their profession and ensure long term financial stability.

For students and potential employers in need of workers, the program is catching fire.

Demand for restaurant workers is hot, but like many service industry jobs where help is wanted, the pay needed by workers is not always enough.

Everything is expensive right now, and with a minimum wage you just can't survive.

- [Melody] Manny Martinez worked hard, but struggled financially before Providence Culinary Training gave him the recipe for career success and higher wages.

- Building my experience, I started seeing all that reflecting in my paycheck.

- You got a little more stability.

- [Melody] Jeff Bacon runs the Providence Culinary Training Program at Second Harvest Food Bank in Winston-Salem.

- I find it easier if you just cut it in half.

- [Melody] The program elevates the skills of food service workers, providing opportunities to gain financial independence and avoid food and shelter in security.

- Well, the challenges for us are that, you know, we're in the south in a community that has traditionally been low waged compared to the rest of the nation.

And then we're in an industry, food service, that is another complicating factor.

It's a traditionally, a low wage, low barrier profession.

- So we wanna see that you guys can actually do the things that you're learning, not-- - [Melody] Chef Daryl Pobanz teaches skills he knows can translate into living wage salaries for students in the program.

- As a chef, big part of your job is to be a teacher.

You're bringing in new people all the time.

You're teaching people new skills.

So I just found a joy in teaching, but also, you know, always a big fan of rooting for the underdog too.

- [Melody] Students here learn cooking methods in an intensive 13-week program.

- Once you graduate from that program, you can go into our advanced program, which is an apprenticeship where you get paid at the same time that you're continuing to get trained.

And the people that finish that program, the advanced training program, 100% of them get jobs above the living wage scale for this area.

- [Melody] Spring House Restaurant and Quanto Basta Restaurant employ a number of Providence graduates mentored by chef, owner, Timothy Grandinetti.

- I can train them anywhere they wanna go, but they have to come with an open mind, a willingness to work, and a want, a need to be great, to be really, really good at what they do.

To have a passion for our craft.

- [Melody] For Martinez, he worked his way up to chef to cuisine at the Spring House Restaurant an employment partner with Providence.

- Everything to work in the kitchen, everything you need to start in the kitchen, I learn it over there in the school.

- The Providence Culinary Training Program is making an impact in the triad area.

The program also partners with local organizations working to address food and security.

Providence Culinary students, not only get diplomas and hands on experience, but they graduate knowing they supported a good course and helped to feed children while they were at it.

- That food, that food, it looks great.

[Melody laughs] Thank you, Melody.

- Yes.

- Joining me now is Cheetie Kumar.

Cheetie is an award-winning chef and owner of the restaurant Garland in downtown Raleigh.

Cheetie, the labor shortage is weighing heavily on the restaurant industry.

Give us some idea of what are the challenges you face finding talent, and what impact does that have on your business?

- Well, it's been a really challenging two years on a lot of levels, especially just hiring people and retaining them.

So many people have left the industry.

I think a lot of people decided that they didn't wanna work at night or they wanted to, you know, get jobs that were, you know, better paid or more comfortable that they could work at home.

They had their kids at home with them, 'cause schools were closed.

So it kinda reduced the options for people who wanted to work in the restaurant.

So for us, you know, it's definitely been a time of being creative and just sort of, you know, just the work kind of falls on us as owners and managers to fill some of those gaps unfortunately.

- So you are not just an innovator in the kitchen, midway through the pandemic, your restaurant actually pivoted to a new pay scale.

What did that look like?

And what was the impact of that change?

- Well, you know, it came out of, you know, my long term, long time disdain for the sub-minimum wage tip credit.

So if people don't know, when you go to a restaurant, generally your server, your waiter, will be making $2.15 an hour.

And that's legal because the tip is, you know, supposed to go 100% percent to that server.

So what happens is that for restaurant people, people who own restaurants, they are simultaneously undervaluing the server, and then the servers also often the most highly paid person in the business.

So, you know, when it's a busy Saturday night, somebody who's earning tips makes a lot of money and the people in the kitchen don't really make any more money and they're working a lot harder.

So we kinda thought, well, while the staff is shrunk and down, why don't we raise everybody above the minimum wage?

Well, obviously our kitchen folks were already making well above the minimum wage.

We then were able to share the tips in a percentage that made sense to us.

So now we are able to share the tips with the back of house and so everybody is making about between 18 and $21 an hour, and the servers are still making about the same as they were hourly before, but it required an investment from us to raise their hourly.

And we also gave them guarantees on, you know, how much they would never make less than a certain amount because we've had so many shifts in revenue, whenever there's a variant surge, you know, our business plummets.

And you know, if you're relying solely on tips, then you know, you're not gonna be in a very good situation.

- Wow!

So many business models changing as a result of the pandemic.

Thank you so much.

We'll look for you in the panel in a few minutes.

- Thank you.

- There are high growth industries, such as healthcare, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing, that offer a lot of job opportunities that provide living wages.

You in Wayne County, we found a program that is helping connect people who are underemployed to jobs that provide a living wage and an opportunity for growth.

ncIMPACT's David Hurst has more on the Wayne Works Initiative.

David, what did you learn in Wayne County?

- Well, Anita, Craig Foucht oversees the Wayne Works Initiative, and he tells me there's a common misconception that there are just not any good paying jobs in Wayne County.

This leads many to leave the area or settle for a low wage job.

But Foucht says there are plenty of good paying jobs in the area, and the Wayne Works Initiative is all about raising awareness about those opportunities and getting people connected to them.

- Hit it where it's just barely touching.

- [David] Working at Smithfield Foods, Dwayne Jones has an ambition to move up within the company.

- Sort of hit tool, one, and tool two.

- [David] That's why he signed up when an apprenticeship program opened up.

- Definitely viewed this as an opportunity to one, have a better paying job.

Two, hopefully to move up, just not from in a working position, but hopefully a position of management, maybe over maintenance or whatever.

- This is the part that syringes up the water.

- [David] The Apprenticeship Program is a partnership between Smithfield Foods and Wayne Community College.

As an apprentice, Jones works four days a week and takes classes at the community college one day a week.

- Up to the ring right here.

- Up to the ring.

- [David] After two years, he'll have an associate's degree in applied science and industrial system technology, which will open the door to more opportunities within the company.

- I like seeing people achieve goals and set goals, and of course I've always done that for myself.

I would love to be in a management position because that way you can sort of lead people along and hopefully, you know, grow them to get out of, you know, positions that they're stuck in, but also move up within the company too.

[indistinct chattering] - [David] This Apprenticeship Program is one of the many collaborations that have come out of the Wayne Works Initiative.

Wayne Works helps those who are underemployed by providing opportunities for economic mobility.

- When you see somebody that didn't have the opportunity to go back to school, always wanted to go to school, always wanted to have a degree, but they've got a kid at home.

They've got a house payment, they've got a car payment.

And you give them the opportunity to be able to continue to work full time, they have benefits, and to be able to get their education, to create income mobility for people that are on the low end or moderate end of the income spectrum.

I think that that right there is probably one of the most exciting things for me, is the opportunity that this provides.

[indistinct chattering] - [David] By linking workforce development with education, the Wayne Works Initiative has also been able to help local employers locate and hire people with trainable skills.

- Well, it's not just what are workforce needs, like what do our business and industry need, but what do our community members need, right?

What education, what skill sets do they need so that they can get these jobs, be successful in these jobs, grow in these jobs, and have a great place to call home and build their careers?

- And hit the shift button with just thumb.

- [David] Dwayne Jones says he's thankful there are these kinds of opportunities in his community.

And by growing his skills, he views it as a win-win for himself and his employer.

- I think with Wayne Community College, and also with Smithfield, they've set the bar high for anybody that's actually looking at starting apprentice program, because the way that they have, you know, taken care of us and really helped out with balancing life in general.

- The Wayne Works Initiative also taunts a strong partnership between the community college and the Wayne County School District.

Alongside youth apprenticeship programs, they also offer career exploration programs.

The goal is to get young people to start thinking about what kind of job they may be interested in and then educating them about what kind of opportunities, Anita, may be available when they graduate.

- Love that.

Thank you so much for sharing, David.

Let's bring back our experts.

Joining us for the ncIMPACT round table is Henry McKoy.

Henry is the director of entrepreneurship at North Carolina Central University.

Henry, I'd like to start with you if I might.

One key challenge that Wayne Works Initiative is working to overcome is the lack of awareness about jobs in certain high growth sectors.

We hear this all over North Carolina.

What else can a community do to educate people about these kinds of careers that may well be in their backyards?

- Well, thank you for this opportunity.

I think it's really a situation of making sure that the community really knows that you have these opportunities like we heard about with the Wayne Community College.

I know I'm a bit biased, but you know, I'm the community lead with the coalition called OneTen.

And OneTen is a coalition of corporations, including those across North Carolina who are part of these high growth industries and are actually looking to connect people to opportunities who don't have traditional four-year degrees and who really are looking to get living wages and upward mobility.

And so I think part of it is really just being able to bring that information together and make sure that folks are able to find it easily and then find out where they can get those skills they need to up skill to qualify for these jobs.

- Okay.

So let's put awareness aside for a moment.

You know about the job, now you need to figure out how do you train for the job and how do you get hired.

What are some efforts to train and employ more people for high growth sector jobs?

- Well, you know, in North Carolina, we've seen an incredible amount of increase around things like biotechnology.

We have thousands of jobs that are coming to the state.

We also have community colleges that are doing training.

We have other talent developers.

And so there are all around the state and we just have to make sure that we find those.

Again, the coalition that I'm a part of is OneTen, oneten.org.

And what they try to do is bring together those job opportunities and then tell the individuals where they can actually go and find training for those jobs.

And so I think we have to find more simple ways for individuals to understand, hey, this is a job that's available and here are the talent developers or universities, community colleges, or whoever that can help us get ready for those jobs.

- Yeah.

So let's flip the script a minute.

We're talking about what employees need and the benefit to employees.

Paige, I wanna ask you about the community benefit.

What does it mean to a community when more people are earning a living wage?

- It is so important.

So we talk about these economic spillovers.

So the idea is that as more people in the community have sort of sufficient dollars in their pocket in order to be able to afford these basic needs, they're spending that in the local community.

So they're buying local goods, they're buying local services, and that leads to greater demand, greater economic growth, and in turn, more jobs, higher wages for everyone.

So this clearly has a lot of positive benefits.

- Hmm.

- I do think also when we talk about hospitality, there are sort of two different restaurant industries.

Independent restaurants that tend to buy local, that tend to contribute to their communities a lot more than say, national chains that, you know, sort of their decisions are controlled by boards and they're publicly traded companies.

And that's just not the case for, you know, people like me who own one or two shops.

- That's a very fair point.

So again, more money in the community is gonna lead to more spending on local stores, as well as some chain stores.

And to the extent that we can encourage more purchasing of local goods, this will have greater community effects.

- I think that's the answer.

- I love that answer.

- Well, I think also, I would say also, just to piggyback on that from community good standpoint, it's also important that youth and others in the community see role models around that get up every day and go to work to have opportunities to support their family.

And so I think that when you talk about the long term impact, that gets added to it as well.

- Yeah.

So, Henry, we'll stay with you for a second.

I love that Cheetie said this is multifaceted.

It certainly is.

For community leaders who are watching this program, what kind of partnerships do you recommend they seek to develop in order to address this issue?

You've talked about OneTen and the big corporations getting together, but in a local community, who needs to come together to do what, to help connect more people to living wage jobs?

- Well, I think it is multifaceted, right?

So at a local community standpoint, you have places like the local chamber of commerce, which certainly has a real important role because that's where the businesses come together and think about the future.

We have workforce boards at the local level that are tied to the state, but they also think about, well, what is a local economy that we need to create?

And so I think that it's bringing a whole lot of different folks to the table.

Look around your community and figure out what are the assets, you know, do you have a community college there that can be of help?

Do you have nonprofit developers, talent developers that can be of help?

The local schools system, again, workforce boards, all these individuals need to come to the table and really think about the future of the workforce.

And how do you bring all those players together to create both the pipeline for the jobs as well as the jobs that are well paying, because of all the things that we're hearing here that those resources do recirculate in the community and it's so important.

- So, Cheetie, let me move to you for a final question.

If all these people are coming together, how does that help you get creative to attract and retain the employees you need?

- Well, I think for an employer like me, I have a restaurant where I know all of my employees.

And my goal isn't just, you know, obviously we need to fill hourly positions, but ideally I want candidates who are drawn to this industry, who wanna make a career in food and hospitality.

So I think, you know, being creative and finding who are, say in the Culinary School at Wake Tech and, you know, they don't wanna necessarily work for a senior living community or a hotel, they really wanna develop the skills of sort of a more refined level.

You know, it's important for us to work with people who are getting trained and finding resources that aren't just, you know, the very expensive job posting boards that I think all of us who, you know, have small businesses are more than familiar with at this point.

- It's a great point.

And thank you for making it because we talk a lot about jobs, but really what we're talking about are careers, opportunities for careers.

Thank you to each of you for joining us.

And obviously, thank you for the important work you're doing in our state to create opportunities.

I also wanna thank all the local leaders who appeared on our episode.

They all generously allowed us to share their stories of their work together.

Of course, we never end without thanking you, our amazing audience for watching and engaging.

You know solutions are out there if we work together.

Tell us what your community is doing or how we can help you.

Email us @ncimpact.unc.edu, or message us on Twitter or Facebook, and be sure to join us every Friday night at 7:30 on PBS North Carolina for new episodes of ncIMPACT.

Coming up on ncIMPACT: Extreme weather events are changing the economy and how we live.

We'll look at how farmers are adapting and thriving amid a changing climate.

[bright upbeat music] ♪ - [Male Narrator] ncIMPACT is a PBS North Carolina production in association with the University of North Carolina School of Government.

Funding for ncIMPACT is made possible by.

- [Female Narrator] Changing the course of people's lives.

That's the impact UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine work to deliver every day.

Our 40,000 team members across the state of North Carolina are committed to caring for you, our patients and communities, as well as educating the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Individually, we can do a little, but collectively, we can do a lot to create impact.