JOB MARKET
There’s no sugarcoating it: Finding a job will be tough
Finding a good job is going to take a lot more work this year.
With the economy in its second year of a recession, and the local economy slowing markedly since the beginning of November, companies here and across the country are in no mood to hire any workers they can’t do without.
Making matters worse, those same companies are looking over their businesses with an eye toward eliminating any jobs they can as part of a vigorous effort to keep costs down until the economy starts rebounding.
Put those two factors together, and it makes for a very difficult job market.
The Buffalo Niagara region’s job growth reached its zenith last spring and slowed steadily ever since, finally turning negative in November, with the loss of 2,500 jobs. Local economists expect the job losses to continue for the immediate future.
“After reaching a peak in May, our labor market started to weaken,” said Mikhail Melnik, a Niagara University economist.
By November, the region’s unemployment rate had swelled to 6.2 percent, well above the 4.5 percent level it had been at a year earlier and the highest November rate in 16 years.
“Right now, it’s very tight,” said John Slenker, the regional economist for the state Labor Department in Buffalo. “Things are going to be tightening up even more.”
A survey by temporary employment agency Manpower found that the outlook for hiring in the Buffalo Niagara region was weak during the first quarter of this year, with just 13 percent of the companies surveyed expecting to add workers, said spokeswoman Kelly M. Scott.
The tighter job market was apparent at this year’s Jobsapalooza job fair, where many more job seekers of all ages were hunting for openings at a reduced slate of companies looking for new hires.
With the decline in manufacturing over the last few decades, the skills needed to find gainful employment also have changed. Education now is far more important than it was during the heyday of the auto and steel industries.
“With manufacturing, you could get a job right out of high school with good wages,” Slenker said. “I’m not sure that’s true today.”
That means it’s important that workers keep their skills up-to-date and keep striving to develop new ones that can improve their flexibility to their current employers or heighten their appeal to potential new ones.
“Whenever you have a downturn, that is when your skill levels have to be honed,” said Slenker, who notes that many workers during recessions decide to head back to school.
“Even if you’re still working, it is a good time to hone your skills because the competition is going to get much more stringent.”
The outlook is especially bleak for manufacturing workers, which are facing stiff foreign competition at a time when sales are slumping and employers are looking to cut costs.
Another 2,000 factory jobs vanished from the Buffalo Niagara region in 2008, extending a decline that has seen three of every 10 local manufacturing jobs disappear over the last eight years.
That isn’t likely to change soon, especially with the auto industry reeling. Among manufacturers, the hiring outlook remains weak, according to Richard Deitz, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist in Buffalo who conducts a monthly survey of the state’s industrial firms.
Even lower-paid retail jobs are being squeezed as nervous and cash-strapped consumers spend less and the weakened Canadian dollar reduces the incentive for shoppers to cross the border in search of bargains in U. S. stores.
“The retail-sector employment losses seem to widen in late summer as the U. S. dollar [began to appreciate] against the Canadian dollar,” Melnik said.
In 2007, the average job in the Buffalo Niagara region paid $38,221, up 3.2 percent from $37,045 in 2006, according to the state Labor Department.
The state Labor Department projects that many of the fastest-growing occupations in the Buffalo Niagara region over the next six years will be low-paying service jobs, such as cashiers, customer service representatives and food service workers, that aren’t highly sought by workers because of the low wages they pay.
For workers seeking jobs that pay better-than-average wages, the best bets are in high-demand careers such as registered nurses, teachers and accountants, according to state Labor Department projections.
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