Vt.’s Economy Picking Up, but Good Jobs Remain Elusive
Adrian Keyser is one of more than 200 people who applied for eight licensed nursing assistant positions at Burlington’s Fletcher Allen Health Care earlier this month. She has been unemployed since November.
“I have been desperately seeking work,” she said. “Just so many people are looking for jobs. It’s very frustrating. It kind of gets on your self-esteem because you are trying so hard and nothing comes through. I know a lot of people that are out of jobs right now,” add Keyser, 20, who grew up in Colchester and lives in Burlington.
Keyser is one of the fortunate ones. She will be leaving the ranks of thousands of Vermonters who have been unemployed for months. This past weekend, she said, she landed the job.
As Congress debates whether to extend benefits for the chronically unemployed, an estimated 23,000 Vermonters were jobless in April. Of those, 6,600 – or 29 percent -- were unemployed for six months or longer, according to preliminary data from the Vermont Labor Department.
Thousands of Vermonters who are looking for full-time jobs are only working part-time. The Labor Department estimates 24,100 are working part-time largely because jobs aren’t available.
Keyser was one 38 finalists for the eight hospital positions interviewed last week at the Labor Department’s Burlington resource center. “Being a nurse is something I have always wanted to do, but I’ve never had the money to go to school for it,” she said. The licensed nursing assistant positions include training funded through a U.S. Labor Department grant.
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The heavy demand for the handful of positions at Fletcher Allen is indicative of the fragile state of Vermont’s economy – and the demand for decent jobs. Although the salary is not overwhelming, slightly more than $11 an hour to start, the state’s largest hospital is a sought after employer that offers good benefits, said John Young, a career counselor at the Labor Department’s Burlington Career Resource Center.
The career counselor is himself no stranger to finding a new career. Young was laid off from IBM Corp. in 2002, when roughly 1,000 employees were axed from the Essex Junction microelectronics plant. “I had to somewhat reinvent myself to do something different,” he said. Now, he is helping others find a new career path.
More than 2,200 people inquired online about the Fletcher Allen positions and 227 applied in person during an orientation in South Burlington, said Gerry Ghazi, president of Vermont HITEC Inc. The Williston, Vt.-based nonprofit is coordinating the training program.
Ghazi sees Vermont’s economy from more than one perspective. “Things are picking up,” he said, referring to the number of companies contacting him for skilled workers. “Yet, there are still not enough jobs.”
“When we see the number of people showing up at our programs, we say, ‘There are just not enough jobs out there.’ So we see it from both sides,” Ghazi said.
The federal stimulus program is credited with preserving thousands of Vermont jobs. Vermont received nearly $1 billion through the economic stimulus program passed last year, including $279.3 million for transportation, energy, and other shovel-ready projects as of this spring. The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates more than 7,000 jobs were created or saved in Vermont through the end of March.
Training programs
Until November, Keyser worked as a waitress at a Burlington pizza parlor. With few restaurants hiring in a down economy, the training program offered with the nursing positions is “a great way to start a new career,” she said.
Training programs have been crucial to help the jobless find good jobs, Young said, referring to the Workforce Investment Act and programs that are providing training for the hospital positions.
During the last five years, more than $28 million in federal funds has been deployed to Vermont. The funding provides job-seeking assistance and skills training to disadvantaged Vermonters, including those who have been laid off during the recession. Last fiscal year, the federal stimulus program pumped another $5.9 million into the state for workforce training, according to the Vermont Workforce Development Council said.
Money through the program has helped jobless Vermonters in the some of the hardest hit portions of the state, said Jane Fortin, the northeast regional manager for the Vermont Labor Department. Fortin oversees resource centers, including those in St. Johnsbury and Newport.
“We have had success in finding people jobs,” she said. “We are enrolling people in training programs to gain computer skills.”
Essex County, in Vermont’s rural northeast corner, has unemployment level of 10.2 percent and is the only of Vermont’s 14 counties have a double-digit jobless rate in April.
Many Vermonters have cobbled together two or three jobs to pay the bills, she said, “They have done what they needed to survive.”
“Historically, the Northeast Kingdom is a little bit slower in regaining the ground that we lose. But we think we are seeing things take a positive turn,” Fortin said.
Gaining traction
The effects of the deepest recession since the Great Depression continue to linger in Vermont. The jobless rate for April was 6.4 percent; May’s rate will be released June 18. While unemployment has fallen from 7.2 percent in April 2009, competition for good jobs remains heavy, as seen through the demand for the Fletcher Allen posts. When the recession started in December 2007, Vermont’s jobless rate was 4 percent. (View a chart of Vermont joblessness here)
Vermont continues to be in better shape than the national economy. The U.S. jobless rate was 9.7 percent in May, down from 9.9 percent in April.
The hardest hit part of Vermont’s economy over the last year has been construction. In April, the Labor Department estimated 10,550 Vermonters were working in that field – a 15 percent decline from April 2009. The strongest aspect of Vermont’s economy continues to be health care and social assistance.
Patricia Moulton Powden, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Labor, is optimistic. The latest unemployment figures, which indicate a slight decline from the prior month, “point to overall improvement in the labor market,” she said.
Despite the falling rate, the last year has been busy at the Labor Department’s Burlington career center. “It’s been challenging,” Young said, noting problems with expiring jobless benefits. “We have seen people coming off benefits that don’t have choices.”
Aspects of the economy are improving, including some boosts in manufacturing, but other ailing sectors such as construction remain in the doldrums, Young said. The career counselor said he suspected the recession would be deep because about 18 months ago sheetrockers, a trade he said is rarely unemployed, were coming into the Labor Department’s job center. “We knew at that point, things were really tough,” he said.
Recent college graduates are having trouble finding jobs as well.
Jon Gilman, 22, graduated from the University of Vermont last month and moved back home to Natick, Mass. to live with his parents while he searches for a job. “I’ve been sending resumes all over the place,” he said. “I knew it was a process. I knew it was going to take a while.”
With the economy struggling to gain traction, the UVM grad said he has placed an emphasis on networking “rather than applying blindly through CareerBuilder or Monster.com.”
More jobs are becoming available, but professional jobs remain harder to find. “There isn’t a lot out there,” Young said of the range of job opportunities.
Employers view resumes differently now, the career counselor said. Previously, Young said, resumes of jobless professionals would be viewed negatively they worked at a low-level retail job until they found a more promising opportunity.
“That’s not the case anymore because of the economy and what’s going on,” Young said. “Employers are understanding that it’s a tough world out there.”
