‘$4.30 difference in Guam-NMI wages’

The first round of the prevailing wage survey that data company Hive Analytic is doing for the CNMI is on track and the initial finding is that there is a $4.30 difference between the CNMI and Guam’s prevailing wage.

Hive Analytic president Matt Deleon Guerrero disclosed this during a Saipan Chamber of Commerce meeting yesterday at the Pacific Islands Club, saying the first round of the prevailing wage survey was finished last April 22. The survey began last April 8.

“We compared what we had against Guam’s [prevailing wage], which would’ve been the alternative if it were not for this survey. Approximately, on average, there was a $4.30 difference,” he said.

That is by how much Guam wages are higher than that of the CNMI’s.

The Chamber jumpstarted the 2019 prevailing wage survey in March and hired Hive Analytic to conduct the survey in the CNMI. This survey aims to set the salaries of foreign workers being petitioned for work visas under the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker program, which was extended another 10 years by the U.S. Workforce Act.

In the first round of the prevailing wage survey, or PWS, Hive Analytics captured 84 occupations in the CNMI using the “three employers and 30 employees” rule.

“These occupations were largely from the hotel hospitality sector: the chief executives, front desks, maids, housekeepers, and grounds maintenance people. …We also captured a large number of occupations within the restaurant and food industry: chefs, waiters, waitresses, hostesses etc.,” he said in his presentation to Chamber members at the Charley’s Cabaret.

“We also captured accountants, bookkeepers, and construction workers,” he added.

The Chamber has already written the Office of the Governor’s about the results of the first round.

He said he was told that the Office of the Governor has already sent the results to the U.S. Department of Labor over the weekend.

“The process now is to take those wages, determine if they meet the requirements and if they are going to be used. Once that happens, those wages and numbers according to the occupations will be published and available for everybody to use for their CW or H visa applications,” Guerrero said.

The PWS wages will cover CW applications for next year…”and will be applied for starting Oct. 1 next fiscal year in 2021 we are hoping that this survey will account for the 12-month requirement of the prevailing wage for those applications,” Guerrero added.

The second round of the survey will cover the rest of the occupations that Hive Analytics wasn’t able to capture because survey requirements were not met.

“There are several of them that were very close in meeting the requirements so it can be reported. We had three employers but only 27 employees instead of 30, so these are the ones that we are trying to narrow down and trying to capture to make the survey statistically significant,” he said.

Some of the changes this time around include translating the PWS instructions on the forms to Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.

“…We have translated [the forms] and sent those out to see if information barriers is one of the reasons why some employers were not able to submit their reports,” he added.

To date, 700 employers have submitted their responses covering more than 11,000 employees in the initial survey and Guerrero is looking at expanding the reach of the survey so they can capture a wider target.

“…We are still refining the data to make sure we are not requesting those who have already submitted their wages and trying to target it so we can get results within a one-week period for the second round,” he said.

Guerrero said the process usually takes six to seven months and “takes a whole staff and large apparatus to get it done…but, together with the [CNMI] Department of Commerce, we did a large amount of survey results done within the seven-week period that we were shooting for.”