Many young adults raised on the Island have expressed a desire to stay here or to come back (if they have gone elsewhere for education, military service, or other work and life experiences). We need to create new work opportunities that utilize our young peoples’ educations and provide long-term capacity to grow in skills, responsibility and income. This is valuable both for those professionally trained and for those who are not. Equally important are those things that will cause the island to be a welcoming environment for those returning: community vitality and sufficient affordable housing.
The main challenge is not to encourage job growth per se, but to encourage the growth of -better paying, and stable year-round jobs, and to raise the level of pay for all jobs. The universal dilemma of vacation communities like Martha’s Vineyard is that costs are high and the type of work needed is largely seasonal and pays relatively low wages. We need to explore options that can address some of these imbalances by providing workforce development and job training that add greater value within vacation related sectors, as well as facilitating new opportunities not driven by our vacation economy. The employment situation would also be helped by bringing jobs that are often “under the table” into the official economy. This is not to say that barter, which is a traditional part of our culture, should not be encouraged, but it is important that workers are not left un-protected if they are injured, require health care, or find themselves unemployed.
Objective L4: Find ways to provide “career path” jobs for the next generation and expand the proportion of higher paying “living wage” jobs.
The strategies outlined above for creating new business opportunities and for gradually re-aligning our core, visitor-based economic activities, are largely focused on achieving this objective.
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