THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 20, 1996 TAG: 9602200275
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Usually, the numbers tell the story of Hampton Roads' job market. But Monday the numbers had a face - actually, several thousand faces, each of which knew the story of the job market all too well.
The day began with a line hundreds of people long curled outside the door, along the front of Newmarket Square Shopping Center and around the corner. Everyone in the line was hoping to be one of the 250 customer service employees Harris Select Communications plans to hire for its new telecommunications office.
The odds of landing a job? Less than one in ten.
Thousands of people are still showing up for job fairs in Hampton Roads, despite a steady flow of new and expanding companies that have created more than 24,000 jobs in the last two years.
On Monday, Harris seemed well on its way to meeting its applicant pool expectations of 3,000 to 5,000 job seekers, said Bill Babboni, a Harris representative overseeing Monday's job fair. A second session was scheduled for that evening.
The long odds were familiar to many in line.
``I've been in the other job search lines: MCI, ValuJet,'' said Poquoson resident Latonya Bonner. ``This is just another one that I'm hoping to get into. I feel I have the qualifications.''
That several thousand people would line up to apply for jobs that pay $7 to $11 an hour - including medical, dental and other benefits - belies Hampton Roads' unemployment numbers. The region's December unemployment rate of 4.5 percent marked a five-year low for the month, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.
But there's unemployment and then there's underemployment, a word economists use to describe people in jobs below their education level, jobs that usually have low pay and few or no benefits. Both the unemployed and the underemployed frequently swamped the job fairs of employers in the region last year.
APAC Teleservices Inc., which has a contract to run United Parcel Service's package tracking center in Newport News, closed its job line last March after 8,700 people flooded the company to apply for 800 jobs; several thousand people contacted MCI Telecommunications Inc. for 1,000 telemarketing jobs; about 1,000 showed up or called for jobs at a ValuJet reservation center.
Several people at the Harris Select job fair had previously thrown their names onto the stacks of applications at MCI, ValuJet and APAC.
It was the region's bottomless labor pool that Harris looked at when it chose Newport News over Corpus Christi, Texas, for its new operation, Babboni said.
Harris, which employs more than 1,000 at its Norfolk publishing house, should have plenty of qualified people to select from when filling its telecommunication jobs.
Chesapeake resident Hershel Crum retired after 21 years of communications work for the Army. He wanted a job with Harris Select, the White Plains, N.Y.-based telemarketing branch of Bernard C. Harris Publishing Co., because it offers more hours and better pay than his job as a maintenance man at a trailer park. As with most, Monday wasn't the first time Crum has tried for a better job.
``I've applied for a few with the city and the telephone company,'' Crum said. ``There's a lot of people out there applying for jobs.''
Crum's brother, Joe, offered a broader, harsher assessment of the employment picture.
``You know what's interesting about this whole thing?'' Joe Crum said, as he watched people filling out applications on clipboards while moving forward in line. ``You got hundreds of Americans lined up for jobs, for a job that starts at $7 an hour. We went through this in the Depression.''
Elizabeth Brandon, who retired from the Air Force, has been looking for a job since October. Her failure so far to land a job isn't the result of being picky. She's applied at several temporary help agencies, at a hotel for a desk clerk job, even for a clerk's job at a gas station.
``I'm desperate, I'm frustrated,'' she said. ``I've heard a lot of `you're overqualified.' Overqualified doesn't pay the bills. If you're willing to work, hey . . .''
Still, Brandon pledged to line up for jobs ``as long as I have to.''
Those applicants who had been previously battered by the job market looked for signs that Harris Select would provide stability. Tarena Woldt of Hampton saw that Harris had signed a 10-year lease and read it as a good indicator of security. She's looking for security because her current employer can't offer her a full-time job. She's been looking for that security since Thanksgiving.
``APAC couldn't offer me fulltime,'' Woldt said. ``If they could guarantee me 35 hours, I'd do it in a heartbeat.''
For a company, this kind of job market is a blessing.
For a job seeker, it's a grind. Newport News resident Rob Mills left his job as manager of a record store looking for a company where there was room for him to move up. So far, no job - let alone upward mobility.
Where else has he applied? ``Everywhere.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN color photos, The Virginian-Pilot
From left, Shawn Towns, Aretha Henderson and Dawn Marrero, all of
Hampton, were among the first in line at the Harris Select
Communications job fair Monday. The three fill out applications as
they stand in line with several hundred others.
While construction of Harris' new office continued Monday morning,
prospective employees lined up outside.
KEYWORDS: EMPLOYMENT UNDEREMPLOYMENT SERVICE SECTOR by CNB