The “college town” takes a toll on permanent residents.
The amount of people living below the poverty line in Athens is 34 percent. However, according to the Georgia Department of labor, the Athens average unemployment rate for 2004 was around 4 percent.
“The strange thing about Athens is that we don’t have a high unemployment rate but a high poverty rate,” said Matthew Bishop, the coordinator of operations for the Archway Partnership, Public Service and Outreach/Cooperative Extension at the University of Georgia.
Because Athens-Clarke County is a college town, its economy is mainly a service economy, Bishop said. Jobs in Athens consist of service work, like working in a restaurant, which supports a college town. Service work jobs pay low wages, many don’t offer benefits, and they can be unstable.
“Our wages aren’t as high as some other counties in Georgia because of the large amount of service jobs,” Bishop said.
The median hourly wage rate for Athens-Clarke County, according to the Partners for a Prosperous Athens’ Web site, is $11.75, with the mean hourly wage rate at $14.63, suggesting that the distribution of wages is skewed in the direction of the lower end of wages.
According to Bishop because students are able to work for lower wages this causes wages and income to skew downward.
“The students are just looking for pocket money, so they’re willing to work for lower wages,” Bishop said. “But permanent residents are trying to pay their bills and can’t survive on such low wages.”
Bishop said that in order to survive small businesses pay low wages. Students and permanent residents compete for the same jobs, but because students often have more education, businesses will hire them over permanent residents.
William Cantrell, a third-year student, said that students deserve jobs just as much as permanent residents.
William Cantrell working at Barberitos, his service job, at its Five Points location.“A lot of students can’t afford school,” Cantrell said. “It isn’t a matter of who deserves the jobs so much as the university needs to pay a living wage to people who work for them full-time.”
Cantrell said though students may not be aware of how disadvantaged the Athens-Clarke County community is, they are still the reason most permanent residents have jobs.
Reverend Keith Johnson, Athens chapter president of the Economic Justice Coalition, said it is easy for students to overlook how disadvantaged the community is because it doesn’t affect them.
“We don’t know what we need as far as service work and student work,” Johnson said. “We need a policy change. President Adams is not the issue. We must attack the General Assembly and the Board of Regents.”
Johnson agrees that the abundance of service jobs, which cater to the university’s needs, have a negative effect on the poverty rate. He said the community’s officials must first do research to find out what people of lower-economic status need. From there, the county needs to create education programs to assist the community.But there are resources on campus that are doing research on the needs of permanent residents.
The Fanning Institute, a unit within Public Service and Outreach, is committed to community development and has worked with programs like Partners for a Prosperous Athens and the UGA Initiative on Poverty and the Economy.
Joe Whorton, director of the Fanning Institute, said the institute works with several non-profit organizations and mentoring programs, which students can get involved in to help those displaced by poverty.
The university and students are not the only factors contributing to high poverty in Athens. Whorton said that many other factors like unreliable transportation, no housing for low income workers and an uncompetitive work force affect the poverty rate.
Joe Whorton, director of the Fanning Institute, in his office.
“It’s appalling and saddening that people who aren’t poor can’t see that we all pay for poverty—our property values are low, our school’s test scores are low—poverty creates long-term community issues,” Whorton said.
Edited by Amanda Williamson
Lots of good new information here and some healthy difference of opinion among sources. The top is still a little vague, and the 5-year-old unemployment numbers aren't helpful, because Athens is in the high 7's as of this summer -- though that's still a couple of points below state and national averages. Comparing Athens' median and average wages to show how wages skew lower is a good point of analysis; you could explain that a little more simply for people who aren't familiar with how that skewing works.
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