A few years ago, Anne Shybunko-Moore, CEO of GSE Dynamics Inc., a defense contractor, hired about five workers from out of state for the company’s headquarters in Hauppauge.
“They all left” soon after, Shybunko-Moore told the Press. The reason: they found they could not afford to live on Long Island, with its high-priced housing.
“It’s hard to be transplanted and not get sticker-shock,” said Shybunko, GSE’s owner. “When someone comes from another state, they have a mathematical comparison” to other areas, where costs, particularly housing, is less.
According to real estate experts and recent reports, the average home price on Long Island is around the mid-$700,000. Nassau County median hit an eye-popping $875,000.
The cost of living on the Island, in addition to a smaller number of skilled workers and longer commutes, is making it increasingly hard for companies to hire and retain employees, according to the latest Long Island Economic Survey.
The survey, taken by Siena Research Institute in Albany for PKF O’Connor Davies accountants, polled 311 business executives on Long Island, between fall and early winter.
The poll found that 78% said Long Island’s high costs are a very serious or somewhat serious block to attracting or keeping workers. Only 3% said the costs were not a problem.
“Confidence is softening,” in the local economy, according to the survey’s key findings. “Expectations for both the Long Island and national economies declined sharply with pessimism about the Long Island economy doubling year over year.” The survey found that 34% of those polled expected conditions to be worse, compared with 16% last year.”
“Long Island’s cost-of-living and housing affordability remain the most serious barriers to recruiting and retaining employees,” it said.
Martin Cantor, an economist and director of the Long Island Center for Socio-Economic Policy in Melville, said it is little surprise that confidence is sagging in the local economy.
“I was on a panel” more than a decade ago, Cantor told the Press. “We were talking about affordable housing, then.”
Very little, he said, has been done.
Affordable housing is available in such areas as Copiague, Islip, Patchogue, and Riverhead, and there are discussions about such units on the East End as well. But employers and experts say there are not enough.
“There are the millennials who want to find a job here and afford to love here well,” Cantor said. That, he added, is proving difficult.
The Siena survey should shake up the Island.
“While our regional economy is stable, the results should be a wake-up call for common sense solutions to issues we have been discussing for many years, including the cost-of-living crisis in Nassau and Suffolk counties,” said Stacey Sikes, a spokesperson for the Long Island Association, the region’s largest business and civic group.
The issue is particularly acute for SiteOne Landscape Supply Inc., a Georgia-based company that has eight locations on Long Island.
Changes by the Trump administration to the H-2B visa program have cut into the number of skilled foreign workers the company can employ during the busy summer months.
“We’re forced to rely on a workforce of American citizens,” said Bill Weismiller, a SiteOne account supervisor, told the Press.
Hiring is tough, he said, because Americans don’t want to work for the same wages as non-citizens.
The company, he said, now has about 50 employees. Come spring and summer, he said, the number needed “will double.”
Sikes and U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), who both participated in a recent panel discussion on the issue, said training programs are available to raise the skills of workers. But, they said, there is not enough coordination with employers. Suozzi said that he plans soon to meet with business groups to develop a database of job openings and skills training programs.
The Siena survey also cited longer commutes as a key hiring problem on the Island.
Eight in 10 CEOs said the longer commutes make the Island a less desirable place to work. Six in 10 cited a lack of public transportation as a problem as well.
While the poll did not address the rising cost of health care, other data suggest such prices top a long list of worries for most Americans, and particularly on Long Island, which has a sizable aging population.
Shybunko, who has lived on Long Island most of her life and has raised four children here, said that her 17-year-old son, James, took a job as a welder — in Connecticut.
“It’s more affordable,” she said.
