New York: Month by month, the US job market is regaining its health. So many jobs are being added that the unemployment rate — 8.3 per cent — has dropped for five straight months. Whether the job market actually feels stronger, though, depends on your perspective.
Here's how things look to employers, jobseekers and analysts with varying views of the job market:
Robb Stiffler landed a job two weeks ago at Crown College, a liberal arts college in St. Bonifacius, Minnesota. He makes sure rooms are available and set up for school events. Stiffler used to run his own company selling paint sprayers. But the housing bust put him out of business. Then, in nine months in real estate, he sold one house. At first, he lived off his credit cards. Then it was unemployment benefits.
Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co. is opening a plant in Galax, Virginia, expects to hire 50 workers by July and perhaps 65 more over the next year or two. The company's revenue has risen 20 per cent in the past two months compared with the same period a year earlier, Doug Bassett, the chief operating officer, says. He credits an improving economy, rising interest in US-made products and higher prices on Chinese imports it competes with. Across the country, Ancestry.com, which helps track family lineage, expects to add 150 employees this year, if it can find them. "It's only gotten harder" to find qualified applicants as the job market has improved, Eric Shoup, senior vice president, says. "The likes of Google, Zynga, Facebook and others are also growing. They are soaking these people up."
Michael Biggers of Brooklyn, New York, was happy to land a job recently at a catering company. The job hunt took four months.
In a few weeks, entrepreneur Joe Wong will open a restaurant overseeing the Sacramento River in Redding, California. The eatery, View 202, will employ 100. But Wong, president of J&A Food Service, isn't convinced the economy is improving. He knows he'll have to keep menu prices down to attract the budget-conscious. Unemployment still exceeds 11 per cent in Redding. Jobseekers still face tough odds. There are still more than four unemployed Americans, on average, for every job opening. In a healthy economy, by contrast, that ratio would be roughly 2-to-1.
Sara Pereda, an executive assistant in New York City's entertainment industry, has applied for several job openings and received no responses, even though she's sure she was qualified.
In Buffalo, New York, Rosanne DiPizio, vice president of her family's DiPizio Construction, says there isn't enough work for her company to justify hiring right now. It relies mostly on government road construction contracts.
Aaron Cruz of Indianapolis says that while hiring has picked up, there's a catch: Landing a job can mean accepting part-time work or a pay cut. Cruz lost his job as a truck driver in December 2008. He didn't find full-time work again until last June. His old job paid $23 (Dh84.48) an hour, his new one, $14.
