LIHU‘E — A positive attitude, a fresh set of eyes and pounding the pavement will help residents find work in the struggling local economy, according to island’s employment resource center. Kaua‘i’s unemployment level rose to 8.2 percent in May, up
LIHU‘E — A positive attitude, a fresh set of eyes and pounding the pavement will help residents find work in the struggling local economy, according to island’s employment resource center.
Kaua‘i’s unemployment level rose to 8.2 percent in May, up from 7.7 percent in April, the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relation’s most recent report reveals.
“We thought that 7.7 was an anomaly more than anything, because it doesn’t fit into any of the other patterns that we’re seeing,” Bill Grier, branch manager of WorkWise Kaua‘i, said Friday. “We kind of expected it to go back up into the low eights and hang right around that area for some time.”
Kaua‘i’s unemployment rate has hovered between 8 and 9 percent during most of the last 12 months. Unemployment was 8.5 percent in May 2010 and 9.8 percent in May 2009.
The Garden Isle has the second highest unemployment rate in the state, just after the Big Island’s 9.2 percent. Honolulu has the lowest rate at 4.9 percent and Maui is 7.2 percent.
“I think that it will gradually get better, gradually being the operative word,” Grier said. “We are seeing all sorts of indications that the job market is improving for people.”
One indicators is people are going back to work part-time, he said.
“Of course, they would prefer full-time, and we would expect them to become full-time as the market continues to improve,” Grier said. “Employers are being extremely cautious in the way that they pull people back in … and are finding ways to do business without as many employees as they needed in the past.”
The mood of job seekers is “discouraged and frustrated,” Grier said. “A lot of people have been looking for work for a long time now.”
For those who find work, wages and benefits have come down considerably since the recession, he added.
Job sectors with the most hiring include construction, medical technicians, the visitor industry and agriculture.
“We have a significant number of agriculture jobs that are open, but Kaua‘i people don’t want to go out and work in the fields,” Grier said. “You cannot convince a young person to go be an ag worker. The irony is that they pay pretty well.”
Ag jobs pay between $15 and $17 an hour, he said, “but young people would rather go to McDonald’s for $7.25 an hour than have their friends see them as a farm worker.
“I had a fellow in here from Dow Agro the other day. He needed five or six people in the field desperately and was having real trouble finding people to take those jobs,” Grier said.
“It’s a great field, there’s a lot of opportunity,” he said. “I wish we could change the perception. What I always try to tell them is this is not your grandfather’s farm work. This is something different. It’s more high tech, more specialized.”
During the last six month, Borders bookstore and Big Save in Lihu‘e closed, collectively displacing an estimated 85 employees.
Grier said most — but not all — of the Big Save employees were hired on by Times supermarkets, which bought out the Big Save chain in May.
“Most of the Borders employees, because they had a great reputation for customer service, got re-employed really quickly,” he said. “Some of them within a day were back to work,” because communications and customer service skills are in high demand.
“Most of what employers are looking for has more to do with attitude than specific skills,” he said. “You can teach somebody to use Word or Excel or a proprietary computer system of some kind, but you can’t teach them to have a good attitude. And that’s what employers really look for.”
He said the turnaround time for newly separated employees varies widely. Some people find a job the next day, some have not had an interview in six months, but those who are patient and persistent and do not become frustrated are getting good jobs.
Finding work the
‘old-fashioned way’
“We have a lot of people who come in who think their entire job search process is to look on the Internet. The fact is only a relatively small percentage of jobs come off the Internet,” he said.
“Most of them come from the old-fashioned way of networking and talking to people that you know and getting the word out there. Some people spend all day every day searching on the computer and think that they have done a thorough job search when they have in fact only touch a little tiny portion of the market. We keep saying get out of that chair and go knock on doors, but some just won’t.”
Statewide unemployment has fallen to 5.9 percent, down a half of a percentage point compared to last year. The national unemployment rate fell to 8.7 percent in May from 9.3 percent for the same period last year.
The state does not seasonally adjust county unemployment figures. The rate reflects the number of people filing for unemployment. It does not include the underemployed, the part-time employed or those who have expended their unemployment insurance benefits.
Hawai‘i pays the highest average weekly benefit amounts in the country at $420, according to ProPublica. The state depleted the unemployment trust fund during the recession and must now borrow from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance claims. As of February 2011, it owed $28.3 million.
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