After living in Miami for 35 years, I always was amazed at how the Port of Miami functioned. It was an incredible logistics process for moving cargo and people as it was located right off Biscayne Boulevard in Downtown Miami. It seems that it is now going to get a lot busier and will profit greatly from the expansion of the Panama Canal. Here is a report from the Daily Business Review that I read.
Many seaports want deeper harbors to accommodate the bigger cargo ships that will start passing through the expanded Panama Canal in three years. But dredging may not be a do-or-die issue.
The expansion of the Panama Canal in 2014 could bring a new wave of cargo business to South Florida even if area ports fail to deepen their harbors by then.
Major seaports on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast are scrambling for authorization and money to deepen their harbors to 50 feet, the depth required for the world’s largest cargo vessels, known as post-Panamax ships.
These big ships now can dock in South Florida only if they have less than a full load of cargo.
Yet “even with the canal’s current dimensions, there has been a noticeable increase in all-water services between East Asia and the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts,” the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation reported in a recent study of the state’s trade opportunities.
Few seaports are closer to dredging to 50 feet than the Port of Miami. The port has authorization from the Army Corps of Engineers to deepen its harbor from 42 feet but lacks federal funding to do so.
“There is pretty much no other port that would be ready to go tomorrow if they got the funding. Miami is the closest in the entire process,” said Doug Wheeler, president of the Florida Ports Council, a Tallahassee-based association representing the state’s 14 deepwater ports.
But Wheeler said the canal expansion also will create opportunities for carriers that operate smaller ships and for the ports that serve them.
This week, Port Everglades decoupled plans to add four berths by 2014 while deepening its harbor to 50 feet from 42 feet. The split stems from doubts about the availability of federal funding for the harbor project.
“We were faced with a situation that we may never get to 50 feet,” said Phillip Allen, director of Port Everglades, “and if we don’t have additional berths, we are really losing a competitive advantage.”
Future employment gains may be concentrated in low-wage occupations
The South Florida labor market may undergo a bottom-up recovery in terms of compensation: an expansion of low-wage employment followed by a slower increase in the number of jobs with better pay.
Robert Cruz, chief economist of Miami-Dade County, said there’s evidence of that “unbalanced growth” trend in South Florida, where many available job openings have been concentrated in low-wage work.
“It basically shows you that the middle class is getting squeezed,” Cruz said. “Even in this recovery, they’re having a tough time.”
According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), restaurant employees, store clerks, nursing home workers and other low-wage laborers have seen big gains in job availability compared with higher-wage employees in areas such as construction, financial services and information technology.
New York City-based NELP reported that while low-wage jobs accounted for 23 percent of the national decline in total employment in 2008 and 2009, they have accounted for 49 percent of recent growth in total employment. At the top of the income scale, “higher-wage jobs constituted 40 percent of job loss, but only 14 percent of recent growth,” NELP said.
The fastest-growing sector of the South Florida economy, education and health services, employs a large number of low-wage workers. According to the NELP study, the average hourly wage of a U.S. nursing home worker is $12.35 per hour.
Retailers account for more than half of the employment in the growing trade, transportation and utilities sector. Retail employees are among the lowest-paid workers of all, many earning below $10 per hour.
Retailers and health care providers could be significant source of area employment growth this year. University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith has forecast that total employment in South Florida will grow by 38,600 jobs this year, compared with last year, and that retail businesses together with health and education services will account for about 40 percent of these new jobs.
Fewer claims for unemployment compensation signal job-market recovery
Initial claims for unemployment compensation in South Florida have ratcheted lower since last summer, a strong signal that the weak market for labor is healing.
“It’s a positive sign the job market is improving,” said state economist Rebecca Rust.
The number of first-time claims for compensation in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties fell by almost 14,000 in the last six months of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009.
Initial claims for unemployment compensation are notoriously volatile from month to month, but the direction of their ragged march has remained south.
“Even though there have been ups and downs, there still is a downward trend in claims,” said Rust, a staff economist with the state Agency for Workforce Innovation. “There is month-to-month variation. Basically what I am talking about are the long-term trends, not month-to-month.”
Initial claims in tri-county South Florida fell to 161,573 in the July-December period last year from 175,335 in the same period the year before, down 7.8 percent.
Year-over-year comparisons are best because the claims data are unadjusted for seasonal variation due to such factors as holidays and the cyclical nature of agriculture and tourism. But a sequential downturn has unfolded, too: The 161,573 initial claims by South Floridians in the second half of 2010 compared with 170,405 in the first half, down 5.1 percent.
As the declining trend in initial claims would suggest, the overall erosion of employment has slowed as labor market conditions have begun to stabilize. South Florida’s unemployment rate, which was 9.2 percent two years ago, flattened from 12.1 percent last July to 11.8 percent in December.
“Unemployment rates have leveled off,” Rust said. But while job destruction has receded, “hiring hasn’t really started yet … Employers are being cautious and are waiting to see if the recovery is going to be sustained.”
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