The Grand Island Independent. July 14, 2019
Retail landscape undergoing sea change
First, the good news. The U.S. Commerce Department reports that retail sales rose 0.5% in May, marking three consecutive months after a roller coaster of a year for consumer spending.
Unfortunately for local marketplaces, the gains in spending were led by online spending.
The time-saving convenience, near limitless selection, cheap or free shipping and absence of local taxes make online shopping a compelling economic choice for consumers over patronizing hometown merchants.
The world’s largest multi-vendor marketplace platforms - Amazon and e-bay - have dramatically and forever transformed the landscapes of America’s main streets and malls.
The economic and social impacts of this phenomenon are manifested in many ways in our communities. Empty big box stores and vacant spaces in malls across the land have altered the social culture, caused job losses and left gaping holes in municipal budgets as local retail tax revenues follow sales volume.
Though many quintessential main street staples, such as clothing, shoe and department stores, have disappeared, other local businesses have thrived and new retail businesses have cropped up. Cellphone companies, local e-commerce storefronts, exercise facilities and electronic product vendors are examples of businesses that have in-filled the retail void.
Some retail outlets have thrived in the new economy. The offerings of big box stores such as Home Depot and Menard’s can’t be replicated in the online marketplace. Ace Hardware is an example of a venerable, locally owned business that the community strongly supports. If an item or expertise can’t be found at the big home improvement stores, the staff will likely recommend Ace.
Because Amazon and other online marketplaces have been able to sidestep local retail taxes, local merchants were placed at a disadvantage.
That advantage ended Jan. 1 of this year, as Nebraska joined 31 other states with laws requiring e-commerce sellers to collect and remit sales tax. Nebraska has had a law on the books for some time requiring consumers to self-report online purchases and pay sale taxes, but few complied.
The state’s new law requires remote sellers with annual gross sales of $100,000 or more than 200 separate transactions to collect state sales taxes.
Tax Commissioner Tony Fulton reported that the last projection of state revenues included money anticipated from online sales taxes to account for $30 million to $40 million of the total.
The state’s online tax is a step in the right direction, but more work is needed to effectively establish protocols for the collection and distribution of online sales tax at the local level.
Nebraska is a destination-based sales tax state. This means that a business located in Nebraska or an out-of-state business meeting the sales volume requirement would charge sales tax at the rate of the purchaser’s ship-to location. For Grand Island that rate would be the state tax of 5.5% plus the 2% local tax (7.5% total).
To truly make the remote sales tax fair and equitable for local merchants and municipalities, local taxes must be collected by the online marketplace seller and that revenue must be remitted to the local taxing authority.
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Kearney Hub . July 13, 2019
Journalism needs your support
This week brought dire news from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment in newspapers, radio, broadcast television and cable declined by 25 percent. Those statistics were part of a Pew Research Center report issued Tuesday - the same day floodwaters rose in Lexington, Elm Creek, Kearney and Gibbon, and area residents were hungry for every shred of information they could get their hands on.
People needed to know if their drinking water was safe, when the power was going to be restored, how to dry out their flooded basements and what to guard against as an army of out-of-town contractors descends for a slice of the action.
In the weeks ahead, local media will continue to serve the public’s needs. We will tell you how to get the best insurance settlement, how to apply for aid from FEMA and the Small Business Administration, and where washouts and weakened infrastructure threaten your safety.
In Kearney, we face a significant threat to one of our largest industries. Tourism accounts for 1,800 jobs in Buffalo County and produces millions of dollars in sales tax revenues to help operate our government, but currently 500 motel rooms are out of commission and event organizers are switching to venues outside Kearney.
How well we at the Hub can serve the public’s needs depends upon the resources we have to produce coverage in all the formats consumers desire.
Newsrooms in radio and TV are facing challenges, but at newspapers the job losses of the past decade are most pronounced. According to the Pew report, in 2008, there were approximately 71,000 employees working at U.S. newspapers. In 2018, that number was just 38,000, a 47 percent decline.
Six weeks ago, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet predicted that “most local newspapers are going to die in the next five years. The greatest crisis in American journalism is the death of local news.”
During the past 20 years, newspapers have seen their franchise whittled away as online companies launched sites that provide up-to-the-second weather reports, employee recruitment, news reports and other services that once were the domain of traditional media, including newspapers.
“Their economic model is gone. I think most local newspapers in America are going to die in the next five years, except for the ones that have been bought by a local billionaire,” Baquet said in May during the International News Media Association World Congress in New York City.
We at the Hub disagree with some of Baquet’s predictions. We intend to be around well beyond five years. We are evaluating and evolving every day how we perform our mission and what we need to do next. In this era of change there is great opportunity - but to succeed and sustain our journalistic mission, we need our community’s support.
Please ask yourself: Where would I look for information during this week’s flooding and danger if there were no local media?
Without our community’s support, we at the Kearney Hub face a tough battle. The last thing we desire is for our readers to one day wake up and discover they’re living in a place that’s unserved by local journalists.
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Omaha World Herald. July 14, 2019
Well-paying jobs are available; let’s connect young people to them
High schools across Nebraska are teaming up with private industry to help train the next generation of workers. This is a vital mission for the state’s economy. Nebraska’s labor market is tight, and the need to meet the job demands is great.
Consider the job market for auto mechanics - or auto services technicians, to use the industry’s term - given the increasingly computerized nature of modern vehicles. “To meet anticipated demand and respond to attrition,” Automotive News recently reported, “the industry will need about 46,000 more technicians by 2026 - a 6% growth rate from 2016.” Retirements are a significant factor spurring that job need.
The same job demand holds true for technicians who service heavy construction equipment - about 20,000 positions will need to be filled over the next five years.
It’s encouraging to see the new internship program in which local auto dealers are working with the Avenue Scholars Foundation to provide training in auto and diesel technology. The internships - which also include other types of local industries - provide not only job training but also instruction in professional skills such as punctuality and teamwork.
Metropolitan Community College has been attentive to this need, with its $32.5 million investment in a new building on its South Omaha campus for auto technology and auto collision programs. Private donations will cover about half the cost. MCC works with local auto dealers to ensure that the training is directly relevant to real-world needs.
Job demands are high in the manufacturing sector, too. Last year, more than 480,000 positions in the sector went unfilled. As a result, more than one in four companies indicated in a survey that labor shortages forced them to turn down new business opportunities, the National Association of Manufacturers reports.
If Nebraska’s manufacturing sector could fill all its needed positions, it could grow by 10%, says Bryan Slone, president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The opportunities are out there, with many of the jobs paying well. Last year, pharmaceuticals and medicines provided 11.3% of job growth in Nebraska’s manufacturing sector, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Some other sources of manufacturing job growth in the state: medical equipment and supplies, 10.4%; motor vehicles, 7.3%; motor vehicle parts, 4.1%.
Iowa this year ranked sixth in the nation for one-year job creation in the manufacturing sector, adding 7,800 jobs. Iowa’s top sources of manufacturing job creation during 2018: aerospace products and parts, 11.2%; machinery for agriculture, construction and mining, 9.7%; pharmaceuticals and medicine, 7.1%; general purpose machinery, 6%.
A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City analyzes Nebraska’s workforce. Some key points from the study:
“ The labor force participation rates for millennials, Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and baby boomers in Nebraska are all “sharply higher” than the national average.
“ Since 2014, millennials have accounted for the largest share (almost 40 of Nebraska’s labor force. Baby boomers make up 25% (down from almost 60% in the early 1990s) and Generation X, 30%.
“ The Great Recession delayed participation in the labor force by a considerable portion of Nebraska millennials. After the recession, 73% of millennials were employed in the state.
“ Millennials account for a higher share of Nebraska service industry employment, and a smaller share of manufacturing and agriculture employment, than did older generations at the same point in their lives.
The more that Nebraska’s young people can be trained and introduced to well-paying job opportunities, the greater the benefits for them and the state as a whole. The many efforts across Nebraska to promote this goal deserve a salute.
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