According to the latest state jobs report, Missouri’s unemployment dropped by one-tenth of a percent in February, but that doesn’t necessarily mean more people have joined the work force.
Missouri unemployment settled at 9.4 percent in February, according to a report released March 11, down from 9.5 percent in January and 9.6 percent in December.
Nationally, unemployment dropped below 9 percent for the first time in almost two years, hitting 8.9 percent in February.
Another gauge of the employment sector – the labor force participation rate – paints a slightly different picture.
At work? The February participation rate – the labor force as a percentage of total population – was unchanged from January, and nearly identical to the 64.8 percent participation rate in February 2010. The current 64.2 percent participation rate also remains at its lowest point since the mid-1980s, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.
“Some people have gotten jobs. Some people have fallen off the unemployment rolls and are no longer drawing unemployment,” said John Peine, adult and dislocated worker supervisor at Missouri Career Center.
Peine said individuals can draw unemployment for 26 to 99 weeks, largely depending on when they lost their jobs. Though there have been some extensions amid the recession, Peine noted that some people who lost their jobs early in the recession may already have exhausted unemployment benefits and could still be looking for work.
Missouri Career Center attempts to have all job seekers check in at its 1514 S. Glenstone Ave. facility, but Peine says not all of them do. During February, the center showed a little more than 10,000 job seekers, down from 15,000. Still he reiterated that the decrease in job seekers doesn’t necessarily mean there are fewer people looking for work.
“One of the reasons people have to come here is to do their four-week reporting for unemployment,” he said, noting that job seekers who aren’t collecting unemployment can search the center’s jobs database online.
Already this year, the manufacturing sector has taken a hit. Solo Cup shuttered its 1100 N. Glenstone Ave. plant March 2. According to past Springfield Business Journal coverage, the closure cut 340 full-time jobs.
Also in early March, Bay Valley Foods, a division of Oak Brook, Ill.-based TreeHouse Foods Inc., announced its plans to close its 72,500-square-foot pickle plant in Partnership Industrial Center by December. The closure – a cost-cutting move aimed at saving Bay Valley Foods $2 million a year – will eliminate 46 jobs.
Bright spots In the meantime, Peine said the number of local jobs available is on the rise.
“If you go back to when we were kind of at the bottom, about a year and a half, two years ago, we probably were down to 150 jobs on the job board for our region,” he said. “About five or six months ago, we hit 600, and now we’re at more than 700, so there are jobs coming along.”
While the Springfield MSA’s gross domestic product followed the downward national GDP trend, the good news for the local economy and employment, perhaps, is that the local drop – 0.7 percent to $14.9 million in 2009 – was far less than the 2.4 percent drop in GDP nationally. Figures for 2009 were released in February.
Regionally, new jobs have come to Springfield with Expedia Inc., which in late 2010 expanded its Springfield operations, adding 500 positions. Texas-based McLane Co. Inc.’s 450,000-square-foot grocery distribution center is expected to employ between 300 and 400 people after its completion this spring.
Farther out in the region, Mountain Grove-based 3G Processing received more than $305,000 in Enhanced Enterprise Zone tax credits in late 2010 to facilitate a $6 million capital investment in an animal feed processing facility. That project, which entails renovating a former steel plant, is expected to create 90 area jobs.
Peine said, however, that having more applicants than listings doesn’t automatically mean those jobs will be filled quickly.
“There are a lot of really good people out there looking for work. It’s an employers’ market right now, and they can pick and choose from the cream of the crop,” he said. “(Employers) are asking for specific skills, and want you to have two or three years of experience at some task. Finding people to meet that criteria will keep a job on the jobs board.”
Right now, for example, he’s working with people who are unemployed as a result of Solo’s closure.
“They’re still in their 40s or 50s, and they need another job. They need to do something other than work on an assembly line making cups, so they’re trying to figure out where to go next. We … try to help them find something that fits their personality (and) is of interest to them.”
The best move for some applicants, he said, is to return to school for specialized training, while others just need to enroll in workshops to brush up on their job-search skills, particularly if they haven’t had to look for work for several years.
Springfield resident Troy Cole still has about a month before he’ll be out of work, but he said he’s already been looking for his next gig for about four weeks.
Cole is an independent contractor with Norway-based RPR Technologies, which uses electromagnetic heat induction to remove coatings from natural gas and oil pipelines, submarines and petroleum tanks.
“I was hired as the business product development manager for the U.S., and now that we’ve got the business built up – my job was basically to find distributors to sell the machines – they’re going to try to reduce accounts payable, so to speak, and I’m part of that,” Cole said.
With a background in specialty and capital equipment sales, dry-ice blasting and medical sales, Cole is seeking a position with a local company, and he’d like to stay in the specialty coatings arena, or in marketing, sales or new business development.
Cole, 46, said his early perception is that a lot of employers are hiring younger workers who might be willing to work for less, making it difficult for him to find jobs that suit his desired income. Another challenge, he said, is that there doesn’t seem to be many area jobs that match his qualifications and experience.
“It used to be, you could go on the Internet or … call people who do the same thing you do, and really rapidly, you could have four or five people to talk to,” he said. “Now, it’s extremely difficult to find one of those people to talk to. It’s just a lack of jobs in my industry, period.”
Cole, who has long lived in Springfield and worked for out-of-market companies, said he has had some contracting offers from gas and oil companies that want him to remove linings from above-ground storage petroleum tank farms.
