Down River: What Do We Make of This? 3/25
By John Lipez
What Do We Make of This?
I’m confused by what I’m seeing. I look at the latest unemployment rate in Clinton County. It went up to 7.3 percent for January, up from 6.6 percent in December, this after a steady decline over the months from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a staggering 16.6 percent in April of last year.
Why my confusion? Because of what I see when I look around: business after business in Clinton Count is pleading for employee help. You see the signs everywhere, from mom and pop shops to the area’s largest employers; there are many, many with ‘help wanted’ signs on display.
Why is this? Why can’t many of those out of work match up with companies looking for workers? This is not my area of expertise, but I have talked to a few employers who relate that many of the best workers are already taken in our small county, but they also don’t hesitate to say that too many area folks prefer not to work, not when they can draw $400 a week or so in unemployment, along with other benefits.
I can’t speak to that; I don’t know enough of the specifics in each situation to do so. I do know that in more than a few decades as an employer in the county (radio, newspaper), we were always fortunate to find solid, responsible people to perform their tasks and perform them well.
But something is out of whack in this county when so many are unemployed but so many businesses are looking for employees. Any ideas?
This is not the kind of problem our area needs. If First Quality is looking at adding another paper machine in town, it needs to know it can find sufficient employees to run it; ditto other area employers.
On a semi-related note, let me share my experience which began a couple months ago when I heard (true hearsay here) unofficially, that the Renovo Energy Center folks were in the process of already hiring employees for their proposed $800 million natural gas-to-energy plant in Renovo.
I put on my news-gathering hat and jumped online, asking about job openings in the power generation business in the Renovo/Lock Haven area. Try it some time; you’ll be amazed. I filled out a few online forms from companies that specialize in filling job slots; they wanted to know essential information such as education and age (I thought for sure my honest answer to the age question would preclude my getting any responses; I was wrong).
And have I heard back. My email account is filled with multiple opportunities every day ever since and I get multiple recorded messages, the caller ready and able to assist me in finding a job, not just in the power generation field, but anywhere and everywhere. So there are jobs out there, for those interested.
It has been instructive to see who all needs help (or so the emails/calls would have you believe). I’ve heard from First Quality, Avery-Dennison, even the National Guard (I did my time there half a century ago and believe I still hold the 728th Maintenance Battalion record for typing 55 words a minute, breaking the old mark held by Spec. 4 G. Michael Hoy; but if they need me, why not?).
Let me share a few other opportunities to come my way, to give you some idea; these all listed for the Lock Haven area, more or less:
Class A local driver;
Postal clerk;
Doordash;
Uber Eats;
Walmart;
Family Dollar;
Truck stop assistant general manager;
Licensed practical nurse;
Medical marijuana plant;
Custom cake designer;
Lock Haven Hospital;
You get the drift. There’s lots out there, all kinds of needs; a variety of pay scales, it would appear.
We’re fortunate in our area to have a major employer like First Quality to continue to grow and prosper, then have Terrapin step up the last few years to provide even more substantive positions; along with longstanding employers like Avery-Dennison and Croda. And let’s not forget West Pharmaceuticals, just across Pine Creek in Jersey Shore, in the market for more employees.
And there are likely more opportunities on the horizon, with the aforementioned Renovo Energy Center project reported trucking along towards the start of construction sometime later this year (hundreds and hundreds of jobs likely there, and while high-paying, of relatively short duration while the plant is built; and so many of those to be filled by “outsiders’).
Bottom line, if you want to work, there are more than a few options out there, ideally something satisfactory and financially rewarding. And if nothing else through my quest to see if the REC folks were starting to hire yet (they have not), I learned it’s a seller’s market. If you want to work, plenty of opportunities at hand.
