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Valerie McMorris has served drinks at the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J., since it opened 24 years ago.

Casinos have sustained McMorris most of her life; both of her parents worked in casinos, she says. "It just allowed so many people a middle class status."

But McMorris says that's changing. Her pay and benefits have been cut. Her husband lost his job at the Revel, a gleaming $2.4 billion casino that went bust this year.

Four of the city's dozen casinos have closed so far in 2014, eliminating nearly one-tenth of Atlantic City's jobs. Unemployment now stands at nearly 11 percent. And with Trump Taj Mahal set to close next month, another 3,000 casino workers stand to lose their jobs — unless the casino's bankrupt parent company strikes a last-minute deal with its billionaire creditor, Carl Icahn.

McMorris says neighbors and friends are moving elsewhere. She'd like to apply for teaching jobs, "but even teaching jobs in this area, they're hard to find," she says. "Because a lot of people can't afford to live here anymore. So they're moving out of New Jersey."

Business

As Casinos Fold, Stakes Are High For Atlantic City Transformation

Around the Nation

Atlantic City Falls From Glittering Resort To Bargain Basement

I'm interviewing McMorris at Burger, a restaurant in the Taj Mahal that now only opens when there are enough customers. These days, that's about once a week. As the city loses gaming clientele to neighboring states, state and local officials are scrambling to try to bring jobs back, by building retail and a new conference center, and repurposing casinos.

Oliver Cooke, an economist at Stockton College, says the city should focus more on growing companies outside hospitality.

As Casinos Close, Atlantic City Tries To Pivot Focus Elsewhere

Neighboring States' Casinos Cast Bad Luck On Atlantic City

He says "the whole point is to somehow kind of move your city or your metropolitan economy, kind of up the value chain. What you hope, of course, to foster is kind of high-wage-led development, as opposed to traditionally low-wage growth."

John Palmieri, executive director of the state's Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, says the city is trying to do just that. "We are fully attuned to the fact that we need to replace the jobs lost with new jobs, but that won't happen overnight," he says.

Palmieri wants to attract higher-paying jobs — "meds and eds, as they say, people who work in hospitals and education. He says the aerospace research park near the city's airport could expand as a tech center.

But he acknowledges that the local workforce, with a low percentage of college graduates, isn't quite ready.

"We have certain distress factors that we deal with," he says. "It's a poorer population. Education's an issue."

So is urban blight. Layoffs and closures have left their mark around the city, with restaurants and businesses boarded up and dark.

i i

Layoffs and closures have left their mark across Atlantic City, with boarded up businesses and restaurants lining the streets. Rob Szypko/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Rob Szypko/NPR

Layoffs and closures have left their mark across Atlantic City, with boarded up businesses and restaurants lining the streets.

Rob Szypko/NPR

As buildings fall into disrepair, the quality of jobs is also eroding, says Paul Smith, a veteran cook at the Taj Mahal. Smith, whose colleagues call him Smitty, is a single father who raised two boys in Atlantic City. Like many others, his main worry is losing health care coverage.

"I need another surgery," Smith says. "Without the benefits, I can't have it."

Last month, the bankruptcy judge approved cuts to work hours and health and pension benefits for Taj Mahal workers. The workers union, Unite Here! Local 54, is appealing the cuts.

Smith, other workers and their union president all say they're fighting to maintain a standard. They worry that any concessions on benefits in a down market like this one would become permanent and would be applied across what remains of the city's casino industry.

"If we do give up our benefits, I mean, I'm not willing to sacrifice the standard for the rest of Atlantic City to change," Smith says. "I would rather this building close."

Trump Entertainment, Taj Mahal's parent, says that if the union fights the cuts, the company will close the casino Dec. 12.

gambling

Atlantic City

New Jersey

Unemployment

casinos

Look at your paycheck.

Chances are good you won't see much more there than you did in the summer of 2008 — just before the financial crisis hit. Average private-sector earnings are $24.53 an hour now, unchanged from 2008, after adjusting for inflation.

So most likely, you haven't felt yourself moving up for years.

Now, that may be changing.

On Friday, the Labor Department said that its latest wage-and-salary index reading showed a 2.3 percent rise over the 12 months ended in September. And the Commerce Department's monthly measure of personal income also ticked up slightly.

"Even a minimal increase in wage growth is a sign of welcome improvement in the labor market," Lindsey Piegza, chief economist for Sterne Agee, wrote in her analysis.

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Many economists say bigger raises may be coming soon. "We expect this trend of rising wages will continue and provide the fuel for an economic expansion that could last several more years," Bernard Baumohl, chief economist for The Economic Outlooks Group, wrote in his assessment.

But even if a major raise isn't on your horizon, five factors will be helping stretch your current paycheck:

Cheap gasoline. In the summer of 2008, gas was $4 a gallon. On Friday, AAA said the national average, as of Saturday, will be below $3 for the first time in four years. The auto club says that downshift will save consumers $250 million a day, compared with earlier this summer when gas was $3.68.

A strong dollar. The U.S. dollar had more global purchasing power back in the early 2000s. Then its value fell compared with other currencies, reaching a bottom in 2011. Today, the dollar is strong again, allowing U.S. consumers to purchase imported goods and foods at lower prices. That change will help keep inflation low for Americans.

Low interest rates. Millions of homeowners have been able to get extraordinarily cheap mortgages. Just before the financial crisis, 30-year fixed mortgages were being offered at 6.5 percent. Today, rates are below 4 percent, allowing homeowners to lower their monthly payments.

Fierce retail competition. For shoppers, this should be a great holiday season because of cutthroat pricing. Wal-Mart told the Wall Street Journal it is testing a plan to match online prices. Best Buy and Target already are doing that, and Target is even offering free shipping on everything through Dec. 20. Analysts expect brutal price competition all around.

Cheaper food (eventually). Corn harvests were enormous this year, sending prices much lower. In 2008, a bushel cost around $8; now it's about half that. It takes a long while for low commodity prices to work their way through the food chain, but the huge corn harvest should help cut animal feed prices, which eventually could tone down the high beef prices that have hurt shoppers.

Of those five factors, perhaps none lifts consumers' spirits more than those tumbling gas prices.

"Consumers are experiencing 'sticker delight' as gas prices unexpectedly drop below $3 in much of the country," AAA Chief Executive Bob Darbelnet said. "Lower gas prices are a boon to the economy — just in time for holiday travel and shopping."

Jose Ferreira, a real estate developer filling his tank at a Boston gas station, did indeed express delight with the price decline. "People struggle to survive, you know. If you can save some money, it's great for everybody," he said.

And while cheap gas can brighten your near-term financial situation, the stock market's surge can help with the long term. On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed at 17,390, up 195, to hit a record high. On the same date six years ago during the financial crisis, it was at 9,325.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

gas prices

consumers

Valerie McMorris has served drinks at the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J., since it opened 24 years ago.

Casinos have sustained McMorris most of her life; both of her parents worked in casinos, she says. "It just allowed so many people a middle class status."

But McMorris says that's changing. Her pay and benefits have been cut. Her husband lost his job at the Revel, a gleaming $2.4 billion casino that went bust this year.

Four of the city's dozen casinos have closed so far in 2014, eliminating nearly one-tenth of Atlantic City's jobs. Unemployment now stands at nearly 11 percent. And with Trump Taj Mahal set to close next month, another 3,000 casino workers stand to lose their jobs — unless the casino's bankrupt parent company strikes a last-minute deal with its billionaire creditor, Carl Icahn.

McMorris says neighbors and friends are moving elsewhere. She'd like to apply for teaching jobs, "but even teaching jobs in this area, they're hard to find," she says. "Because a lot of people can't afford to live here anymore. So they're moving out of New Jersey."

Business

As Casinos Fold, Stakes Are High For Atlantic City Transformation

Around the Nation

Atlantic City Falls From Glittering Resort To Bargain Basement

I'm interviewing McMorris at Burger, a restaurant in the Taj Mahal that now only opens when there are enough customers. These days, that's about once a week. As the city loses gaming clientele to neighboring states, state and local officials are scrambling to try to bring jobs back, by building retail and a new conference center, and repurposing casinos.

Oliver Cooke, an economist at Stockton College, says the city should focus more on growing companies outside hospitality.

As Casinos Close, Atlantic City Tries To Pivot Focus Elsewhere

Neighboring States' Casinos Cast Bad Luck On Atlantic City

He says "the whole point is to somehow kind of move your city or your metropolitan economy, kind of up the value chain. What you hope, of course, to foster is kind of high-wage-led development, as opposed to traditionally low-wage growth."

John Palmieri, executive director of the state's Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, says the city is trying to do just that. "We are fully attuned to the fact that we need to replace the jobs lost with new jobs, but that won't happen overnight," he says.

Palmieri wants to attract higher-paying jobs — "meds and eds, as they say, people who work in hospitals and education. He says the aerospace research park near the city's airport could expand as a tech center.

But he acknowledges that the local workforce, with a low percentage of college graduates, isn't quite ready.

"We have certain distress factors that we deal with," he says. "It's a poorer population. Education's an issue."

So is urban blight. Layoffs and closures have left their mark around the city, with restaurants and businesses boarded up and dark.

i i

Layoffs and closures have left their mark across Atlantic City, with boarded up businesses and restaurants lining the streets. Rob Szypko/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Rob Szypko/NPR

Layoffs and closures have left their mark across Atlantic City, with boarded up businesses and restaurants lining the streets.

Rob Szypko/NPR

As buildings fall into disrepair, the quality of jobs is also eroding, says Paul Smith, a veteran cook at the Taj Mahal. Smith, whose colleagues call him Smitty, is a single father who raised two boys in Atlantic City. Like many others, his main worry is losing health care coverage.

"I need another surgery," Smith says. "Without the benefits, I can't have it."

Last month, the bankruptcy judge approved cuts to work hours and health and pension benefits for Taj Mahal workers. The workers union, Unite Here! Local 54, is appealing the cuts.

Smith, other workers and their union president all say they're fighting to maintain a standard. They worry that any concessions on benefits in a down market like this one would become permanent and would be applied across what remains of the city's casino industry.

"If we do give up our benefits, I mean, I'm not willing to sacrifice the standard for the rest of Atlantic City to change," Smith says. "I would rather this building close."

Trump Entertainment, Taj Mahal's parent, says that if the union fights the cuts, the company will close the casino Dec. 12.

gambling

Atlantic City

New Jersey

Unemployment

casinos

Ask Northern California sheep rancher Dan Macon what this drought is doing to his pocketbook and he'll break it down for you real quick.

"It's like if you woke up one morning and lost 40 percent of the equity in your house," he says. "Our primary investment in our ranch is in these sheep and we just sold 40 percent of our stock."

Macon had to sell off almost half his herd at an auction for cheap. There wasn't enough feed to go around. This has also forced him to take an off-farm job — a first since he started ranching in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Auburn, Calif., two decades ago.

"So in addition to taking care of the sheep, I [also] work 30 to 40 hours a week," Macon says.

Three years of severe drought in California is making a lot of farmers and ranchers like Macon make some tough choices, and in some cases rethink everything about their business. If the conditions persist – and many forecasters predict they will – this could have far-reaching impacts on our food system. By some estimates, California produces more than half of all the fresh food we eat in the U.S.

Yet producers in California are finding some opportunity in these tough times.

Rancher Dan Macon, for instance, says he has had little choice but to experiment and take a few chances. That "off-farm" job he took is with the local University of California, Davis extension office, where he learned about new varieties of experimental rye and wheat grasses that he's decided to try and seed his pastures with.

"This is part of our drought strategy to find some grass species that we can introduce that'll do better in drier conditions," Macon says.

Bleating sheep clamber around the pickup that is parked on a baked-brown pasture. The sheep don't know it, but they're also helping trample thousands of the experimental seeds into the soil. The hope is that if the big storms don't hit this region for a fourth straight winter, maybe these new grasses will help this pasture hold through another hot, dry summer.

Another strategy, says Macon, is to make better use of technology from right here at his pickup.

"I've got things on my cellphone that allow me to monitor our forage use and to map the areas that we're grazing that I didn't have five years ago," Macon says. "That all adds to our capability to manage through the dry period."

i i

California sheep rancher Dan Macon had to sell almost half of his herd because the drought left him without enough feed. Kirk Siegler/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Kirk Siegler/NPR

California sheep rancher Dan Macon had to sell almost half of his herd because the drought left him without enough feed.

Kirk Siegler/NPR

How to manage in a future with less and less water is something you're starting to hear a lot from ranchers and farmers across California. This is an industry that has long been criticized for being reluctant to change. Agriculture still uses 80 percent of all the water in California.

But talk to long-time farmers like Kirk Schmidt, who's also an attorney and former Farm Bureau president in Santa Cruz County, and it's clear there's more to the story than that.

"Agriculture is an industry and industrial research is always led by the demand of the industry," he says. "There was no need for research in water conservation because there was no demand by the farmers."

But with droughts becoming the new normal, Schmidt says farmers have to change. Traditionally, research focused on maximizing yields and profits regardless of water. Now it's starting to move the other way: How do you squeeze more out of less water yet still turn a profit?

A good analogy may be to compare agriculture with the auto industry, which historically resisted tougher fuel efficiency standards. But today, new cars get better mileage than ever.

"Much like the auto industry, the problem is, it's one thing to know this and it's another thing to have the knowledge of how to do this," Schmidt says. "And that's where the delay is going to be."

Sometimes it takes a crisis to act. This is what happened recently in Schmidt's own backyard in the fertile Pajaro Valley along California's central coastline. Much of the nation's cut flowers and berries come from here – this is where fruit giant Driscoll is headquartered.

The Salt

Why California's Drought-Stressed Fruit May Be Better For You

The Salt

Fields And Farm Jobs Dry Up With California's Worsening Drought

Farmers long relied on pumping groundwater to irrigate their crops, until the day when those wells got so depleted that the only thing they could get out of them was contaminated sea water.

"That was a big eye opener for us that we could have something go bad that quickly," says Stuart Kitayama, whose family has farmed here since the 1970s.

After extensive negotiations, Kitayama and other farmers banded together with the local water agency to build a new state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant. It used to be that all the wastewater from cities and towns here was treated and drained into the ocean. But at the plant it's now intercepted, treated, but pumped back to the local farm fields.

Kitayama says farmers were skeptical at first, but they came around. He says they had no other choice.

"Unless we solve this together with fairly expensive projects we're going to get left out on our own," he says.

This fall, with California in the grips of one of its worst droughts on record, the state finally took notice. The water agency and farmers here celebrated a sizable new grant coming from a state drought relief bill that will help expand the plant and ground water monitoring.

Local leaders gathered outside the plant, which sits just a couple miles from the coast, to celebrate. In a year where barely three inches of rain fell on Watsonville, they said a little creativity had brought some opportunity in these tough times.

California drought

farmers

agriculture