THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601210057
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
When winter idles the Outer Banks, the Dare County unemployment office tunes up its engine and shifts into overdrive.
With restaurants shuttered, T-shirt shops stripped bare and beaches deserted, the plain brick building in Nags Head may be the busiest place on the barrier islands.
The rate of unemployment in Dare County routinely skyrockets beyond 15 percent in January.
That's a far cry from the summer, when the Outer Banks is packed with tens of thousands of tourists. Employers snap up anybody willing to work.
In 1995, unemployment in January was 15.6 percent, but by July, at the height of the summer season, only 1.3 percent of the work force was idle.
Of a county labor force of 12,000 last January, for instance, 1,950 were out of work, according to state labor figures. But by July, only 220 people were unemployed, in a labor force of 17,350.
On the Outer Banks, restaurant and retail workers make up most of the out-of-work applicants seeking unemployment benefits this time of the year, said Dorothy Pennell, branch manager of the state Employment Security Commission office in Nags Head. Construction and fishing-related employment also suffers lulls in winter.
Some employees collect unemployment benefits every winter, year after year. Pennell said it's part and parcel of the region's resort-based economy.
``I think given the seasonal nature of this area, it's a byproduct of that,'' she said.
Unemployment insurance benefits paid to Dare County residents in January 1995 were $545,176; in July, benefits totaled $28,998.
Despite the perception by some that work-in-the-summer, collect-in-the-winter jobs are tailor-made for abuse, Pennell said she doesn't see much of it. As it is, she said, applicants are held to strict requirements and often endure long waits at the employment office.
A worker filing a claim for unemployment must be able and available for work, must seek work in person and may not have any restrictions to accepting a full-time job. He or she must have held a job for at least six months between October 1994 and September 1995 to file a new claim. A claimant also must report to the local state office every four weeks.
``I think it's a pain in the butt, I really do,'' said a Powells Point woman, who asked not to be identified. ``I would rather work - it is such a hassle.''
The woman, interviewed outside the Nags Head office, said she works from March through December as a retail sales manager on the Outer Banks. She said this is the third winter she has collected unemployment, and she hopes it will be the last.
``One thing that is so degrading about it,'' she said, is that the system makes ``you feel so low when you go in there, like you should find something to do instead of filing unemployment.
``We don't want to draw unemployment,'' she added, ``but it's either that or not have any income for two and a half months.''
The 1995 county unemployment percentages were 2.4 in May and June, 1.3 in July, and 1.7 in August.
In November, the most recently available figures, the unemployment rate in Dare County was 5.6 percent. The number of jobless workers started creeping up in October to 4.1 percent, up from September's rate of 2.5 percent.
But if you take into account that the federal government considers a rate of 5 percent full employment, then the summer rate is extremely low, Pennell said.
State employment rates are figured in two ways - unadjusted (raw numbers) and adjusted for seasonality (calculating changes in a consistent pattern). For example, a normal work force fluctuation would be teachers not working during the summer. Since they are still employed, their temporary withdrawal from the labor force would not be reflected in adjusted state jobless figures.
Unemployment rates below state level, however, are not adjusted, Cottrell said. As a result, the monthly unemployment rate in Dare County does not in itself depict the normal market ebb and flow peculiar to the region.
Desiree Matlack, branch manager at Grade A T.E.M.P.S., a Nags Head employment agency, said there is not enough year-round work in the area, which sets up an inevitable perish-flourish situation in the local work force. To many, she said, unemployment benefits may make the difference between making it or not.
``It's very hard to get a job here,'' Matlack said. ``And if you're not familiar with the area, it can be very frustrating. They expect it to be easy here, but it's not.''
She said a lot of jobless residents come in to her agency after Thanksgiving, with another wave after Christmas. Mostly, she said, they're looking for anything they can get, although once in a while she'll encounter someone who is obviously dancing around the system while collecting unemployment.
``It's kind of a personal thing,'' Matlack said. ``Some people try really hard to find employment. But we see people who come in here and fill out an application. . . . We ask them to check in with us. We don't hear from a lot of people sometimes.''
Charlotte Zorc, a Nags Head waitress who recently began collecting unemployment, said the vast majority of Outer Banks employees work very hard when the work is there. Consequently, few feel guilty when they head for the unemployment office after Thanksgiving to apply for compensation.
``They really bust their butts and work a lot during the summer and they think they deserve it,'' she said. ``They work seven days a week for three or four months, usually without overtime. They just feel like winter's their break.''
With very little winter work available, year-round residents here have learned to save during the summer to get through the off-season, especially if they live in a single-income household, Zorc said. But Hurricane Felix had a severe impact on people's savings accounts this year, arriving at the height of the season in August. Zorc said she lost about $800 in income because the restaurant where she worked was forced to close for several days and vacationers avoided the barrier islands.
As Zorc sees it, filing for unemployment benefits is merely a part of the unorthodox ways people here learn to piecemeal together enough income to survive; part of a lifestyle dependent on weather and rooted in adaptability.
``It isn't that much money - a lot of people think you're really cruising on it. This is a necessity,'' she said. ``I don't think people make a habit of it.'' by CNB