The new Amazon center will be across Union Airpark Boulevard from Procter & Gamble’s seven-year-old distribution operation, north of one of footwear company Crocs’ distribution sites. Crocs is building a third warehouse for its operation, after enjoying a strong year in 2020.
Energizer, Purina, ALPLA and other companies also have a presence west of the airport.
As of two years ago, deft real estate moves around the airport had led to the development of five logistics buildings totaling more than 2.7 million square feet and employing then more than 2270 people — a massive $92.3 million in capital investment at that point.
Those numbers have only risen.
Jeff Hoagland, president and chief executive of the Dayton Development Coalition, said local leaders welcome news that wages at Amazon will start at $15, well above Ohio’s minimum wage of $8.80. But he points to Amazon’s promised benefits, as well.
Amazon says it offers full-time employees health plans, 401Ks, maternity and parental leave and a program that covers 95% of tuition and fees so hourly employees can acquire “in-demand skills.”
“The benefits package is probably going to be one of the strongest ones out there,” Hoagland said.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
‘A good living wage’
The coalition CEO believes upward pressure on wages is already being exerted, given the confluence of big logistics employers west of the airport.
Companies were comfortable building the facilities in the area because they believed workers would come, Hoagland said. And they are coming: Greater Dayton RTA’s route 43 to the airport/Northwoods Boulevard/Peters Pike area has grown 105% since 2014, according to a recent tweet by Brandon Policichio, RTA’s chief of customer and business development.
“The companies have been seeing this trend, and they’ve been bumping up their salaries all along,” Hoagland said.
A spokeswoman for footwear-producer Crocs, which closed its Los Angeles, Calif.-area distribution operation in 2019 to move it to Dayton, confirms that wages are rising, at least for her company.
“I am happy to share we recently raised entry level wages for new OHDC (Ohio Distribution Center) team members to $15 an hour, and also raised wages for all OHDC employees, commensurate with experience and tenure,” said Melissa Layton, a spokeswoman for Crocs.
“We certainly want to maintain our status as a competitive employer, but more importantly we want to do right by our employees,” Layton said. “So that means ensuring we’re providing a good living wage, as well as offering great benefits and incentives.”
Crocs pays annual bonuses to every full-time employee, “which we think sets us apart from many other competitors,” she added.
Asked whether Amazon facilities force nearby competing employers to raise their wages, a spokesman for the company last week declined immediate comment. Amazon’s fulfillment center in Monroe and its “last-mile” delivery operation based in Kettering will continue to operate after the Union center opens in 2022, the spokesman said.
A spokesman for JobsOhio, the state’s private development arm, declined to make Ted Griffith, JobsOhio’s managing director for the information technology and logistics sectors, available for an interview last week. The spokesman said information about state incentives to Amazon may be made public later this month.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the mean (or average) hourly wage for laborers and freight, stock and material moves nationally as of May 2020 was $16.21 an hour, or $33,710 a year.
In 2018, that number was $12.79 an hour, a little more than $26,000 a year.
The mean hourly wage for warehousing and storage workers in May 2020 was $16.69.
Richard Stock, director of the Business Research Group at the University of Dayton, said the steeper the supply curve of labor, the greater the impact of an increase in labor demand wage rates. That might be seen as the impact of Amazon and other companies are having in the area around the airport, he said.
Said Stock: “The increase in the demand for labor by Amazon should definitely mean that other firms pursuing the same type of labor will have to pay higher wages. And by the way, this is a good thing for the local economy.”
In the Dayton metropolitan statistical area, the mean hourly wage for laborers and freight, stock and material movers was $14.59 as of last May, BLS data shows. Distribution managers here enjoyed a mean hourly wage of $57.87.
The mean hourly wage for all occupations in the Dayton area last May was $25.88.
While Amazon’s announcement was generally welcomed, not everyone sees it as unalloyed good news.
Increased traffic, economic transformation
Dan Wendt, city manager for Vandalia, welcomes the new jobs but sees challenges in Amazon’s plans.
“This development and other planned logistics centers to the west of the airport negatively impact Vandalia in a way that no other community in the region is currently affected,” he said in an email.
“The increased truck traffic could lead to real safety concerns with regard to collisions, as well as, increased congestion, noise, and wear-and-tear ... on infrastructure,” he added.
Wendt said the city is working with businesses, the Ohio Department of Transportation, and other partners to “find common sense solutions to not so common problems.”
“We are investigating physical improvements to roadways to promote safety, pursuing legislative remedies via the Ohio legislature that would limit through truck traffic in town, and contemplating appropriate signage that would direct semi-trucks to Airport Access Road or around the north side of the airport,” Wendt said.
Writer and ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis was in Dayton the day before Amazon’s announcement talking about this very subject: How Amazon has changed America.
MacGillis — author of a recently published book taking a critical look at the Amazon phenomenon, titled Fulfillment, Winning and Losing in One-Click America — sees Amazon’s Union announcement as doubly emblematic: The transformation of Dayton’s economy from one that had as its foundation blue-collar manufacturing jobs to today’s economy, where retail and logistics jobs are noticeably more prevalent.
The news in his view also underscores a “transformation” of the national economy.
While plenty of Miami Valley residents are still making things, MacGillis sees a growing number of local workers who are engaged in packing and moving things made elsewhere, sometimes half-a-world away.
“You have a place that used to be such an incredible center of manufacturing and innovation, now increasingly, after the wrenching manufacturing losses of the last couple of decades, now turning to logistics as its sort of bread and butter,” MacGillis said.
“The region was already kind of well on its way to that kind of identity,” he added. “Now it’s just like the final affirmation of it. You already have the big Amazon center down in Warren County (Monroe).”
According to the Federal Reserve, in March 2021, some 40,600 workers were employed in manufacturing in the Dayton MSA, up from a low of just over 36,000 workers in 2009 — but only about half as many of the 78,800 employed in that sector in 1990.
By comparison, Federal Reserve data put the overall total number of Dayton MSA employed people at 370,387 in March 2021, a year after the start of the pandemic, down from 376,402 in February 2020.
BLS data puts the number of “trade, transportation and utilities” workers in Dayton in March 2021, the most recent number, at 65,700, up slightly from 65,400 in October 2020.
But MacGillis was quick to add that Dayton and other regions are in no position to turn away these kinds of jobs.
“You deal with the hands you’re dealt,” he said. “And there are a lot of larger forces that have brought us to this point: Yes, places feel like they have to accept this as an alternative.”
About the Author
