EDC Lancaster County

Dashiell House _{on Google}

Apr 23rd, 2020

So nice!

J Go _{on Google}

Dec 8th, 2019

Six months after I moved to Lancaster I met a guy who told me it took him two years to find a sales job. That seemed like a really long time, and he seemed like the kind of guy to ace any interview. After a year of trying to get a job here, I can see why it took him so long. Lancaster is a rough place to find work. It is turning into West Virginia, and the Economic Development Company (EDC) is failing to stop it.
I have some suggestions/comments. First, the EDC needs to remove from their YouTube channel the video about Urban Outfitters moving to Gap, PA. It is nothing to celebrate. That place is a concrete plantation. The warehouse workers are 60% to 70% Puerto Rican yet almost every single warehouse manager is white. That is not the sort of inclusion the EDC purports to support. Not only that, but Urban isn't even listed among their donors. Apparently, the billionaire CEO, Richard Hayne, can't spare a few thousand a year for Lancaster. Oh wait, being a miser is how he got to be a billionaire.
One of the EDC's major donors, Woodstream, is a rotten company. They pay temps just a tad bit above a living wage at $12/hr and drop them if they admit to having a college degree. They save money by paying their employees poorly and then give it to the EDC so they can look good.
Lancaster County's population ranks 123 of 150 metro areas in the US for educational attainment according to Wallet Hub. Most of the places that rank lower have a large non-citizen population such as Brownsville, TX, but Lancaster doesn't have that. As one might expect, with low education comes low end jobs. Lancaster has almost double the number of industrial/manufacturing jobs as the national average. The BLS forecasts that these jobs will decline by 5% over the next decade. The companies are going to make up for the loss by paying employees even less.
I have a hunch that business leaders have been setting up Lancaster to be a low wage manufacturing and distribution hub for multiple generations. In the past they blocked Ford Motor Company from setting up a plant here, and I suspect it was because they didn't want to compete with Ford for workers because it would mean they would have to raise their wages.
Today, Lancaster attracts companies that want to recruit low-skilled immigrants to do low paying warehouse jobs. Typically, one ethnic group will be the majority of people in Lancaster warehouses. It is usually Puerto Ricans but sometimes, as in the case of AmerisourceBergen in E-town, it is Nepalese. Also, Africans are often a sizable minority. They must endure long commutes to Gap, Elizabethtown, or Ephrata. They must also endure bad hours. Their jobs often start or end around 5am and thus depriving them of sleep. The jobs always involve doing the same repetitive task all day such as scanning 5,000 clothing items or tossing them on a conveyor belt, or opening 1,000 boxes a day. No thinking is allowed. They are treated like machines.
I have a couple suggestions for the EDC.
1. Do not encourage the building of warehouses. The jobs in these places are mind-numbing, low paying, push people hard, deprive them of breaks and sleep, and will be automated out of existence in the future.
2. Do not encourage the tourism industry. The jobs are not only low paying but the industry overall will decline in Lancaster since the sort of demographic that goes to attractions such as the Renaissance, Dutch Wonderland, and to see the Amish is shrinking.
3. Encourage the medical industry but not nursing/retirement homes since they mostly have low paying CNA jobs. Obviously we need enough beds for Lancaster residents, but making this the retiree capital of the state, which is currently happening, only ensures a larger nursing home population in the future, which will mean low-paying CNA jobs.
4. Encourage tech.
5. Don't let the farmers lock up the land and encourage building more housing units.
Most of all, try to get some more educated people in the area.