Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 16, 1995                   TAG: 9506160045
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: F.J. GALLAGHER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TAKE THIS JOB - PLEASE, STORES IN ROANOKE PLEAD

She found several possible jobs and decided to spend the summer as a sales associate at the Leggett department store in Tanglewood Mall.

"I like clothes, and this is something I enjoy," said the 19-year-old sophomore. "Restaurant work probably would involve nights and working in a hot kitchen or something. This is much better."

Many employers in industries that traditionally offer low- or minimum-wage jobs, such as food service and retail sales, are looking to thousands of Roanoke-area students like Swaney to do some of that work this summer.

That's because the Roanoke region is seeing the impact of a labor shortage, as evidenced in an unemployment rate that has sloped steadily downward for the last year, said Marjorie Skidmore, job service manager at the Virginia Employment Commission. The Roanoke metropolitan area's jobless rate drifted down from 3.5 percent in April 1994 to 3.1 percent this April, the latest available statistic.

Consequently, students are finding a labor market weighted heavily in favor of job seekers. For at least a year, jobs that pay less than $6 per hour without benefits have been hard to fill, the VEC has reported.

"I hate to say it, but they can probably just about set their own hours, too," Skidmore said. "Most places would probably work around a student's schedule just to get somebody in there."

In the fast-food industry, managers want to hire high school students almost exclusively. Many have seen an upswing in the number of applicants and expect to see that number increase even more in the next couple of days.

"Last year, it was the same thing. A lot of them go to the beach the first week out of school. I think they'll probably start coming next week," said Walter Dodson, who manages Rally's Hamburgers on WIlliamson Road.

Workers at Dodson's store, where a help-wanted banner hangs on the Rally's sign out front, start at $4.50 an hour. Typically, he hires 50 percent of the people who come through the door looking for a job.

"I'm pretty lenient" with regard to scheduling, he said. "If someone doesn't want to work weekends, the next one probably wants to work just weekends."

As a result, he said, most of the students he hires stay on the job through the summer.

"I'd say around 5 percent of them jet" after a couple of shifts, he said.

Just down the road, at Papa John's Pizza, store manager and franchise training coordinator Ann Andrews also has hung a help-wanted sign. Her store's turnover rate for workers is hovering around 80 percent, she said.

Friday and Saturday are the busiest days, Andrews said, and all employees are told in their interview that they will be required to work those shifts.

"Some of them don't even last a week," she said. "It's to the point where we take bets as to how long they'll last."

Joyce Wall, human resources manager for Leggett, said the majority of the students she hires for the $4.75-per-hour positions prove reliable.

"We get a lot of summer applications, and we'll probably get more next week," Wall said.

The jobs are available, she said, and the students are important to the business, covering shifts so year-round employees can take vacations.

"We hired six new temporary summer employees last week," Wall said, "and we'll probably hire more in the future. Experience is not really important, as long as they have the desire to work."