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Gilda Radner's classic Emily Litella character on Saturday Night Live would have been the perfect employer in New Orleans today trying to hire workers.
What's all this fuss I hear about raising the minimum wage? she'd ask. I can't pay anyone a minimum wage.
And it's true. The de facto minimum hourly wage in New Orleans is not the $5.15 pittance set by the federal government. In reality, first fed by the fast-food hiring antics at Burger King and McDonald's and now by the voracious construction industry, the true minimum wage in New Orleans is approaching $10 per hour.
It's a vastly unique marketplace, said Janet Speyrer, associate dean for research and professor of economics at the University of New Orleans. Speyrer supervised the 2006 UNO Salary Survey, which measured wages paid out by 45 companies encompassing 48 different professions.
The wage pressures have also unleashed a devastating turnover rate approaching 50 percent in some workplaces, said Kevin Mulligan of Harper Resources in speaking to the Society for Human Resource Management meeting in New Orleans. He said human resource professionals will have to pay to keep talent around in...