Nearly a decade after the first casinos opened in Massachusetts, most appear to be meeting and exceeding the hiring goals, according to a new “Casino Job Quality” report.
The findings were presented to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission Thursday. The report involved researchers with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Donahue Institute and Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts project.
The research team studied workforce conditions and payroll data from each of the state’s three casinos, ranging from January to December 2022.
“In terms of studying job quality, what we really were trying to look at is measures, including mobility, retention, living wages. When we went into this, we did a pretty extensive literature review of what people were looking at when they were studying job quality,” said Project Leader and Senior Research Analyst Thomas Peake as he walked the gaming commissioners through the findings.
Among the highlights is a turnover rate that appears to be far lower compared to the Accommodation and Food Service Industry as a whole, in addition to better compensation.
Of 6,601 people employed in the industry, the median hourly wage was believed to be $28.31, with turnover rates at casinos coming in at 28.6 percent, compared to the service industry as a whole, with its rate of 115 percent.
The study specifically notes that while 28.6 percent is the average, MGM Springfield appeared to have the highest, with 46.7, while Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville appeared to have the lowest, just under 16 percent.
Using a “living wage calculator” developed by MIT, researchers also found nearly 61 percent did not appear to make what the calculator defines as a living wage.
“The jobs do tend to pay better than similar service industry jobs, but still not enough that, at least using MIT's calculations, we could expect a lot of these people to be self-sufficient and make ends meet in the counties where they live,” Peake said.
As for who actually has the jobs, the study found that in many cases, the casinos appeared to be meeting or exceeding their hiring goals for minorities, veterans, and local workers, though hiring for women has been falling short.
In the case of MGM Springfield, the casino exceeded a stated goal of 50 percent minority workers with 57.3 percent, in addition to doubling its goal of 2 percent veteran workers with nearly 5 percent.
The study also specifically states that MGM “met its goal of hiring 35 percent of its workforce from the City of Springfield, with 39.6 percent of its employees” coming from the host community.
Having said that, the research also indicated all three casinos, including Encore Boston Harbor, fell short of employing a half-female workforce. All three appeared to employ just over 42 percent women.
Peake also indicated the study showed some form of racial discrepancies when it came to pay.
“When it comes to earnings, another thing we did notice - there are some racial disparities within the casinos, which may in fact be – that there may be sort of education and skill certification issues that play in here - just what types of departments people are working in, and whatnot,” he said.
In the top 20 percent of earners, people of color are “represented in similar proportions to hiring targets for minority workers.” In the case of MGM Springfield, that’s 50 percent.
However, in the bottom 20 percent of earners, people of color are over-represented.
“We sort of broke things out by percentage - the lowest 20%, the next highest 20%, up to the highest 20%, and workers, Black and Hispanic workers, as well as workers who identified as ‘Other’ tend to be more common in the lower quintiles, where white and Asian workers are much more common in the higher quintiles,” he noted. “So, there does seem to be some evidence that there are discrepancies. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that within a single job, like within bartenders or within accountants, that there is a racial discrepancy, but just broadly within the workforce - the highest paid workers do look different than the lowest paid workers.”
Other findings include limited career advancement, with few workers being promoted in 2022 — an average believed to be 2 percent.
The full report can be found here.
