this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. good evening, everyone. and welcome to a special labor day edition of "nightly business report." i'm sue herera. tyler is off tonight. labor day, a day dedicated to the american worker. it's the perfect time to discuss employment, a key gauge of economic health that everyone has an eye on. tonight we'll examine the important issues that lie ahead for the job market from minimum wage to where the jobs are. we'll find out which parts of the country are geared up for growth, and we'll even tell you the best cities for pay raises. we begin tonight, though, with a look at how the work force is evolving and how that evolution is creating opportunity. the sharing economy, for example, is fueling a boom in nontraditional positions, and allowing people to make a

full-time job out of part-time work. the digital revolution has created problems that need solving, like cyber threats, and data organization. the solution? trained employees. mary thompson traveled to companies who are looking for these new types of workers and she'll tell us where the jobs are and what skills are needed. >> reporter: a painter since childhood, 29-year-old mariah walton said her art makes her good at her job. >> i have a mental image of everything in my brain, and i feel like i've actually been a really good strength in joining them. >> reporter: always an artist, once a meteorologist, walton is now a data scientist at the networking site linked's in. her job is to sift through the files generated by clicks on linkedin's website. it's helping the firm serve its clients and advertisers better.

but it's not just like big data, all industries do it these days. putting a premium on workers like walton. >> data field is actually very sexy, and it's a hot demand. it's super hard to find right talent and the right people. >> reporter: that demand leading the consulting firm mckenzie to a find a shortage. >> we saw the potential gap of 140 to 190,000 positions in the united states alone. >> reporter: linkedin's head of data recruiting will hire over 100 data scientists this year. a 50% increase from 2014. she says competition for talent often leads to bidding wars for workers who depending on their background can command a six-figure salary. linkedin keeps its minds and eyes open when looking for talent, recruiting at tech talks and conferences, and taking a chance on people like walton who

don't have a background in computer science. people like jared, the 31-year-old working in intelligence and the solar industry before landing at linkedin. >> the one common thread, i think, that really unifies those is, i was in a place that had a great deal of data. and it really wasn't structured. and there were these interesting and really critical important business questions that we wanted to ask of the data. >> reporter: questions big data miners like walton see helping their employer answer the big questions that face business today. in the world of the cyber criminals, one of the newest recruits. >> what i like best is, it doesn't feel like a job. >> reporter: a former welder, hudson now works at morgan stanley. he completed a three-month training program. >> we're looking for vulnerabilities, any threats that can compromise personal

information and data that's highly regarded to the organization. >> reporter: costing businesses an estimated half a billion dollars a year, cyber attacks show no sign of showing down, and that's fueling growth in a sector semantic estimates will have 6 million jobs by 2019. but only 4.5 million people to build them. >> the market's hot right now. because every time you open up the newspaper, there's another cybersecurity attack going on. >> reporter: higher demand means higher salary. burning glass technology said on average cybersecurity jobs pay $84,000 a year. that's 9% more than your typical i.t. job. still, these positions are tough to fill. burning glass ceo said that's because candidates need technical chops, and a deep knowledge of the industry it will defend, like health care, retail or finance. >> about 84% of cybersecurity jobs require a college degree. 70% of them require multiple years of experience. in a field that really didn't

exist multiple years ago. >> reporter: to build a pipeline of workers, head of human resources, amy, is looking beyond the walls of higher education and expanding sd-3. a program focused on training minorities and women. >> 80% of them have ged or equivalent degrees. it's a work force that you wouldn't normally have access to, or they wouldn't have access to. >> reporter: she's among graduates that take courses, including ethical hacking and security plus. >> it changed my life in many ways. >> reporter: and for semantic, it's changing the way it develops workers to fill critical jobs available now, and in the future. for emily sharon, a six-month search for a full-time job, with lots of part-time work. >> my world just sort of exploded. >> reporter: the new jersey native and former teacher, broadcaster and chef, finding strong demand for her writing, cooking and other skills, through the online odd jobs marketplace.

>> i've been hired to write a love letter, and deliver a frappuccino. >> reporter: sharon, one of the 33% of workers in the u.s. who are free lancers, a number seen growing to 40% by 2020 according to its study by intuit. >> the online marketplaces are expanding free lance well into the territory that used to be occupied exclusively by full-time employment. >> reporter: this professor sees this driven shift with high-quality free lancers, generating more jobs for the free lancers at higher pay. >> we grab it across every profession, are significantly higher than the bureau of labor statistics averages for the same professions. >> reporter: still, task grab it ceo says while 10% of the firm's 30,000 taskers make part-time work their full-time job, most task to make ends meet.

>> 90% of the community is actually utilizing this to pay one to three bills every single month. >> reporter: doing two to three tasks a day -- >> on my way to new york city to complete a task. >> reporter: -- sharon grosses about $3,500 a month after task grab it takes their cut. >> heading to cupcakes. >> reporter: as much as sharon loves the ever-changing nature of her job, at her age she wants the stability of a full-time job. >> i want to know exactly what i'm making. >> reporter: the income uncertainty a problem for many people who work on their own, a problem the founder of the free lancers union sarah horowitz believes could be partly solved by a government-run worker funded rainy day reserve. you could imagine people could be able to put away pretax amounts into an account. one way of providing protection to a fast growing sector of the work force. for "nightly business report," i'm mary thompson in new york city. this year, the debate over

wages has been front and center. the federal minimum wage remains stalled at $7.25 an hour. the amount it's been at for the past six years. slowly, cities have been taking the issue into their own hands, and hiking pay. but not all small businesses are waiting for their city council to decide how to best compensate workers. kate rogers tells us what main street is doing to level the pa scale. >> reporter: a small restaurant in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, implemented a flat wage of $35,000 a year for its employees this spring. servers and backup house staff are now on an even playing field. they also get a stake in the restaurant via profit sharing and health insurance. >> a lot of times restaurant employees, it's viewed as a job, not as a profession or career. the people that we have here don't think of it like that. this is a career for them. so we want to treat them more like that and pay salary and offer benefits and health care. the things that you normally

associate with a real world job. >> reporter: workers are gearing up to receive their first quarterly bonuses ever. practically unheard of in the restaurant industry. employees like zach are paying close attention to store operations. >> it's more of working smarter. i mean, if we see something that needs to be used up, if it doesn't, not only the restaurant loses money, but i'm losing money. >> reporter: while the common message on main street is small businesses can't bear the burden of wage hikes not driven by the market, some are proving that theory wrong, paying well above both state and federal wages. across the country, at earth friendly products in garden grove, california, kelly is paying her workers $17 an hour. the household cleaning product manufacturer has always paid above minimum wage, because she says it's the right thing to do. the company has facilities across the country, and retails in big name stores, including

walmart. >> if the minimum wage had been adjusted for inflation over the years, it would be nearly $22 an hour. i'm not advocating taking it that high at this juncture, but we realize we needed to do something to create a living wage for our employees. >> reporter: esp also gives rebates to workers who install solar panels on their roofs or drive green vehicles. they say it's made all the difference. >> most of my money went to paying child care, and then i was left with a couple of dollars, and i had to decide, okay, what do i want to do, do i want to pay my utility bills, or do i want to bring food to the -- for our family? but now, with this increase, we have a home now, and we have transportation. and i'm able to provide for them. >> reporter: for "nightly business report," i'm kate rogers. coming up next, looking for a raise? you might want to consider

moving. we'll tell you where you have the best chances of upping your income. as you probably know, small businesses are seen as the engine of job creation, which is why cities are looking to lure startups with incentives, and it's working. just as the typical american worker is transforming, there has been a major shift in the places that are deemed the best for starting a new business. kate rogers takes us to two cities seeing massive business

growth, and they're nowhere near silicon valley or new york city. >> reporter:. >> you describe it as a place that has a silicon-like vibe but with good barbecue. >> reporter: entrepreneurs looking for an alternative to san francisco or new york, durham, nng, is billing itself as the new startup capital of the south. a former tobacco warehouse is now home to 240 early stage companies in an incubator called the american underground. but perhaps what's more impressive is that after these companies get off the ground, they aren't fleeing for the coast. they're staying put. >> many of the companies find the area to be relatively sticky. so it's an incredible asset base in durham and in the triangle with the great universities that are here. venture capital firms and things like that. many startups find they really like it. there's a great quality of life and they end up staying. >> reporter: this woman created

her energy drink brand while studying at duke university. she grew out of duke's incubator and into the american underground as her company continued to expand into stores like whole foods across the southeast. she even won last year's demo day securing a $100,000 investment from aol steve case. but she's not planning to relocate anytime soon. >> durham is where my company was born. it's where my first customers were. it's a great place to live. the quality of life is fantastic. >> reporter: durham is on the short list to receive google fiber, the high-speed internet product in the future, and the american underground is a google for entrepreneurs' tech husband, receiving both financing and mentorship opportunities for their startups from the internet giant. this woman took advantage of these opportunities. a program giving workers laid off from triangle park a second chance. >> it meant everything to us. because you have unlimited

resources that you can tap into. the american underground provided us some structure of teaching us how to do our message, teaching us what does it mean to do startup. >> reporter: patterson is living her dream now of being her own boss. she launched my family cloud last year. she's reinventing herself in a place reinventing itself, from tobacco road to an sbu entrepreneurial hotbed. austin, texas, may be known for live music and barbecue, but these days it's gaining steam for something else. it's a vibrant startup scene. isabel louisiana is one of austin's rising small business stars. this year she was awarded woman business of the year by governor greg babbott. she went on to show at new york and austin's fashion weeks. even landing her clothes in

nordstrom stores. >> it started with art for me. i've been painting since a very young age. that really led me to fashion through way of sewing. i was doing a lot of mixed media and incorporating fabric into my art. that led me to an interest in selling. i fell in love with the world of fashion. i haven't stopped since. >> reporter: her fashion week debut was thanks in part to del, and its women's entrepreneur network. startup for launching at record rates here in austin, in fact, in 2015, there were an average of 550 new entrepreneurs per month in the metro according to the kaufman foundation. technology companies like spice works, which has raised a total of $111 million in venture capital funding so far are laying the groundwork for an alternative tech scene to rival both silicon valley and silicon alley. the social network for i.t. p s pros, a former twitter executive. >> austin is absolutely achieved critical mass on at least our

scale, in terms of the number of companies that are hiring people. i think producing good business leaders. we've always had good tech talent here. i think we're now developing new business tech leaders as well. i think there's critical mass not only for the companies here now, but those who will come, and hopefully maybe some of us are producing the sort of the austin style of managing tech companies. >> reporter: for newer startups, there's capital factory, a fund all rolled into one. at any given time, they're up to 400 startups in residents working and hoping to become the next big thing. >> there's a lot of overlap what has historically been the live music capital of the world. it has a lot of creators. we have, i think, by nature, we have a culture that is very innovative as a city. we have a university that has a lot of great talent. we've been blessed with some extraordinary successes that have created an ecosystem where

there's other investors that are willing to invest at an early stage. i think austin has sold itself over the years. where else can you eat breakfast tacos? >> reporter: in austin texas for "nightly business report" i'm kate rogers. >> what about those of us not taking the plunge and going out to start a business on our own? you've heard of moving for lower taxes, and better schools, well, how about a higher income. the salary research company pay scale took a survey to find out where you have the best chances of getting a higher than average raise. here to discuss the findings is pay scale's kenny madaro. nice to have you here. welcome. >> thank you for having me. >> let's start, first of all, before we get to the cities you might want to consider moving to for a better raise, let's talk a little bit about the complexion of raises. are we seeing significant percentage moves in raises this time around? or is it pretty steady? >> yeah. well, raises have remained

relatively stagnant over the last few years. but the good news is, they have improved since the great recession. >> by how much? >> a couple percent. we're looking at raises closer to 2-ish percent in the great recession, now it's pumping up against 3.5 to 4%. >> also, instead of a straight raise, now employers are adding bonuses and incentives. the complexion of what a raise is has changed. >> exactly. surveying over 4,000 organizations, we found that almost 76% of them are now offering more incentives as part of the total compensation package compared to only 70% in the early 2010. >> so let's take a look at the three best cities, or places that you might be able to get more bang for your buck in terms of your employment. we have dallas, texas, minneapolis, and seattle. what do they share? >> the main thing that they share is a strong tech presence,

or in minneapolis's case a biotech or bioscience presence. that's a really hot competitive field, where competition for talent is working together to drive up wages across the region. >> and the three worst cities for raises, i wouldn't want to be on this list, houston, texas. it's been hit hard by energy falling. new york, and riverside, california. are there any threads of similarities in that? >> similar to the top three. the bottom three are there because of their dominant industries, or what they're really seeing in terms of their market trends in those industries. houston has taken a hard hit with the fall in gas prices. it used to be a real kind of leader for wages. but it's been relatively lackluster the last few quarters. >> katie, thank you very much. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> for the full list head to our website nbr.com. imagine a starting salary of 70 grand a year. meet the entrepreneurs who are making that a reality.

. students across america are headed back to school this week. here's a nod to some of the things that come out of business school classrooms. steven neil caplan at chicago's boost school of business explains to us now how student concentrations are evolving with the times. >> entrepreneurship at chicago booth just passed finance as the

number one concentration. so we've had this huge increase in interest in entrepreneurship over the last 10, 15 years. you can't teach somebody to be creative, or to come up with a new idea. i think that's innate. but what we can absolutely do is increase the likelihood you succeed if you have a good idea. an example is grub hub. grub hub was a raw startup in my class in 2006. and we helped them a great deal in refining their business model, helping them get funded, and today, that company is worth on the order of $3 billion. >> what a great success story. graduating with a business degree isn't the only path toward success. in fact, one of the most devastating issues the new american worker is facing is student debt. it's the norm to go to a four-year school, take out thousands in loans, and hope someone will hire you so you can pay off all the money you owe.

that formula doesn't work out for everyone. tyler mathisen introduces you to two entrepreneurs, a harvard grad and a college dropout who are trying to make an education that pays off obtainable. >> jen eisenberg is a software engineer at paperless post. that's the online stationery shop. she helps write the instructions or code that make the website function. a computer science major, not jen, that foray lasted one semester. >> i realized i couldn't build anything tangible. >> instead, eisenberg majored in ling wis ticks, but spent the summer before her senior year of college learning the basics of coding at new york city's flat iron. >> that's crazy. the internet happened. >> adam enbar helped start the flat iron school. he didn't study computer science

either. after college, he wondered if his education was really worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars he and his family spent. >> i didn't feel like i had any real skills. a college degree used to be the best investment somebody could make. that's not really the case anymore. >> he began working at a venture capital firm looking for ways to invest in fixes for higher education. he didn't find much, until he heard about a college dropout who was teaching people to code, and helping them get jobs. >> computers are stupid. they don't know anything. we teach them everything. >> he taught himself to code as a new york city teenager. he dropped out of college to write software for a hedge fund. later, he co-founded his own web-based business, but on the side he began teaching others to code. at meetups, workshops, coffee shops. students thanked him for changing their lives. >> they were like, this teaching thinking is amazing.

it was a profound impact to have on someone. >> he's telling me about his hobby. my mind is melting. i'm like, you are doing what most educators in america can't do. >> enbar figured they should start their own school. >> i said, no one will come to our school. >> but within days he changed his mind. they leased space, bought desks, and for about $40,000 total, opened the flat iron school in october 2012. >> how to give very clear instructions is a science in itself. >> only about 6% of the applicants are accepted into flat iron's four-month program. it costs $15,000. but 99% of the graduates, nearly 500 in less than three years, have jobs. average pay? more than $70,000 a year. >> my increase in salary was something like 40%. >> tiffany studied music business management in college.

now she's a software engineer at an online marketing firm. >> i was a musician, i was a theater kid. it doesn't matter what kind of person or background, as long as you want to learn it. >> which is why enbar and flaumbaum see a future like reading, writing and arithmetic is a basic tool that can open the door to success. >> to create a new way to teach people the stuff. a new kind of paradigm that doesn't require a four-year and master's degree in linear algebra to take your first computer class. >> flat iron offered classes in 13 cities across the country this summer. the founders believe most jobs will eventually entail some level of coding. and that's why they believe it's just not for computer science geeks anymore. and finally tonight, good news if you did some driving this holiday weekend. you probably saved some cash. according to gas buddy, a gallon

of regular was $2.45 across the country. that's the lowest it's been during a labor day weekend since 2004. overall, americans were expected to have spent nearly $14 billion these past three days, on things like hotels and eating out. according to the u.s. travel association, that's just a slight increase when compared with last year. that is "nightly business report" for this labor day. i'm sue herera. have a great evening, everybody. tyler will be back and i'll see you tomorrow. by barnes & noble,

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