“I am hiring everybody I can,” said Jeremiah Smith, owner of Doyle’s Cedar Hill Restaurant in Murphy. “For a service sector job, it is offering a good wage and benefits,” Carpenter said.Ĭompetition for the labor pool poses challenges for some small business owners, who have already been losing employees to the new casino. And compared to other service sector jobs, the casino offers better wages and benefits than a comparable position at a fast-food chain or gas station.
“There were some concerns early on about ‘Hey is this the kind of thing we want?’” Carpenter said.īut the influx of jobs in the service sector - even if they aren’t as good as jobs in other fields - are better than no new jobs at all. Not just that, but we provide long-term career path opportunities,” Lambert said.īut the hourly wages for lower-end positions like food service workers and hotel housekeepers are still lower than those found in construction, health care, manufacturing and professional fields. “We feel like we have a good benefits package and competitive pay. Lumpy Lambert, the general manager of the new Valley River Casino, said the casino is known for its second-to-none benefits.
“What the casino has done for the service sector is amazing,” Carpenter said. The Panther Top Tower in the Nantahala National Forest near Murphy will be open 10 a.m.…
