One day last summer, I
gave directions to two young Asian women on bicycles who were
looking for the grocery store. Further chatting revealed that they
weren’t tourists. In scattershot English, they told me that
they were from Thailand and had come to Cody, Wyo., on temporary
work visas to serve up hamburgers in Wendy’s, the fast-food
franchise. As they smilingly pedaled away, I called after them:
“Welcome to Cody!”
Around the same time, I
spied a newspaper story about two male Romanian college students
spending the summer cooking in a Cody restaurant. I also noticed
that Buffalo Bill’s Irma Hotel employed four college-age
women from Russia. Indeed, a trip to the concession centers in
Yellowstone National Park is to hear a cacophony of Nabokovian and
Naipaulese English accents. And the Mexicans? No matter your views
on the incendiary immigration issue, it’s a cliché to
say that they are everywhere.
I’ve been in the Cody
labor force for 14 years. At my first job, as a waiter at the Irma
Hotel, I saw two cooks fired on the same day. Other staff, tired of
management conflicts, quit and walked out the door on a regular
basis. Across the Cody service economy, people were often fired on
the spot for trivial reasons. Cody was — and still is — a summer
tourist town in a right-to-work state. But is it starting to
change?
The numbers are in: Wyoming grew by 2 percent in
2006-’07, which currently makes it America’s ninth
fastest-growing state. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, our
population reached 522,830 this past July, up from 512,757 the year
before, for a jump of 10,000. This growth reflects a curious
combination: a booming energy industry that attracts out-of-state
workers, and the surge of upscale newcomers flooding the state, the
latter a microcosm of the greatest demographic change in the
200-year history of the American West. These mostly baby-boomer
newcomers aren’t waiters, dishwashers or hotel room cleaners.
In 1994, the Cody business community could count on a
seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. Summertime Cody was
full of lively and ambitious high school and college kids. The
updated daily list at the state job service office showed about 20
jobs, even in summer. Today, it is about 80 in midwinter, and up to
200 in summer — 200 jobs that nobody wants. The service economy
has expanded greatly in 14 years. In 1994, McDonald’s was
Cody’s only fast-food restaurant; now there are a dozen. We
have a chronically understaffed Wal-Mart Super Center. A Walgreens
store will be under construction downtown this spring. But who will
work there?
There are upsides to the employment crunch:
It’s harder to get fired, and the increasingly desperate
business community has to keep raising wages and incentives. You
won’t find many local young people at Wendy’s, though.
These cell-phone-toting, skateboarding high school and college kids
are so prosperous — thanks to mom and dad — many don’t need
— or want — to work at all.
Fourteen years ago, a
reasonable rental housing market provided homes for the service
economy folks. No more. As trophy homes rise in the surrounding
countryside, Cody itself is gentrifying, and $300 apartments now
rent for twice that. Houses that once rented for $500 are now
$1,000, even $1,200. Utility costs (the “city bill” in
Cody parlance) continue to rise like anywhere else. Throw in $3
gasoline and inflation at the grocery store, and the rising wages
don’t come close to covering basic expenses.
It’s interesting to note that some businesses, especially
hotels and restaurants, in nearby Jackson, Wyo., and Red Lodge,
Mont., have begun to acquire local housing to rent to their
employees. Cody’s noted dude-ranch industry has always
operated on the “room and board” model, but now the
idea is coming downtown, so to speak. This company-town model
isn’t a solution specific to the Greater Yellowstone region,
of course. Ski towns in the Rockies have long known that they need
to provide as much worker housing as possible.
But
here’s what I see happening: Many of the people working
multiple jobs — wherever they come from — will be forced to leave
town, maybe choosing such unlikely places as Worland, Greybull or
Lovell. As for the business sector, it will “howl like
gutshot panthers,” as our colorful favorite son Alan Simpson
might put it, while asking themselves: “Who will work?”
Bill Croke is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes and
toils in Cody, Wyoming.
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