Rough Weather Ahead

From Rep. Heath Shuler's (D-NC) district, in a state with unemployment already above the national average:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Thousands of people flocked to a western North Carolina job fair this week, backing up traffic on an interstate ramp and more doubling the number of job seekers who came last year.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reported Wednesday that about 2,000 people attended the job fair Tuesday to talk to some of the 56 employers who participated. Last year, about 800 people attended.

I attended the first edition of this job fair two years ago, just to keep my finger on the employment situation in western North Carolina. It was lightly attended in 2006, with a few companies actually hiring, others planning to. I went back yesterday.

This morning ABC radio news and AP (above) reported on it. Photos here. Video here.

• Traffic was backed up down the mall exit onto I-26, with a line to turn into the mall itself.
• Inside, hundreds of people - a mob scene, with people on benches and spilling outside to fill out job applications. Temp agency tables had stable lines 10-12 people long.
• Broad spectrum of job seekers, both young and old, from new graduates to tradesmen to men in suits and wingtips. A middle-aged woman seeking work remarked, "You feel like you're a young kid again." An acquaintance mentioned a woman laid off in the last few weeks who appeared frantic.
• Only 11 manufacturing firms in the mix; the rest mainly service providers.
• Two call center operations were hiring.
• Several temp agencies and continuing education providers.
• I ran into four people I know who were looking for work: an unemployed CNC programmer (machine parts), a real estate broker looking for part-time work, a nonprofit project director/planner, and a friend laid off from an institutional sales job (who applied for a live-in innkeeper job, hoping to rent out her house to pay the mortgage until things improve).
• Few actual jobs available, by my observation.

So many people scrambling for so few jobs. I spoke by phone with a friend at the NC Employment Security Commission who was surprised that 56 vendors attended (she expected 30), but said the list of area employers not at the fair was also significant. Several had pulled job listings from the ESC recently.

The local paper (which already shuttered its local printing facility and cut staff: 60+ jobs) reports that "Unemployment in Western North Carolina reached 5.9 percent in October, going as high as 9.5 percent in Cherokee County."

Buckle your seat belts.

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