"Part of this is probably because many of the jobs we're adding aren't helping," Fuller said. The hotel industry is booming, but it tends to hire part-time workers, as does retail, he said.
"National retail chains tend to use workers they don't have to pay over 30 hours a week, so they get no benefits," he said. "The average annual wage in retailing has actually gone down."
That is true locally. Paychecks haven't caught up with the cost of housing for many of Prince William's 173,000 workers. About half leave the county every day for what are often better paying jobs in Fairfax County and the District. Those are the people who probably have fewer problems paying their mortgages.
"The high-paying jobs are in those high-rises in Fairfax," said John Hampton, owner of Express Personnel Services Inc. in Manassas. "The reason people are going there is because they can make $50,000 instead of $35,000 here."
That is not likely to change soon. The largest employer in Prince William, Virginia's second-most populous county after Fairfax, is the government. In Fairfax, it's professional and technical services, including the county's wealth of tech employers. In Prince William, retailing is almost a fifth of the workforce; in Fairfax, it is less than 6 percent.
Prince William and neighboring counties are adding residents faster than almost anywhere in the country, which means retail will keep expanding to serve this exploding population. But the jobs don't pay much. At the low end, they pay $7.50 an hour, although some new retailers have started paying as much as $10 an hour, said Ron Stevens, workforce services supervisor for the state unemployment office in Woodbridge.
"With the unemployment rate low, we still get a lot of people looking for jobs," Stevens said. "But they're people with jobs who are looking for a better job or one closer to home."
One of the retailing workers receiving food stamps in Manassas is Heather Stevens, a 24-year-old single mother of two. Stevens said she was laid off two days before Christmas from a clerical job paying more than $17 an hour. She now works at a donut shop for $6.50.
Stevens said she is stretched and has been looking for months for something that pays better because she doesn't want to have to leave the county in search of cheaper housing.
"I send out five to 10 résumés a week," she said. "I get responses sometimes. But I haven't got an interview yet."
