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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Work wanted

Employment prospects here are better than in other parts of the U.S. – but that’s no consolation to those seeking jobs

Andrea Pidliskey has spent months unsuccessfully looking for a job as a cook or a cashier. She says she wants to get regular work so she can move off a friend’s couch and get her family their own place.

Doug Larsen, on the other hand, has just started his job search. He’s hopeful that his experience and his recent degrees in business will help him land a position in operations management.

Somewhere in the middle is Kimberley Plummer, a 35-year-old mother of three who left a steady job earlier this year for a position with medical benefits at Kaiser’s Trentwood plant – only to be laid off in October. Now she’s out there in a market that’s getting tougher for job seekers.

“It’s definitely competitive,” she said. “People are going for jobs below their skills – and above. Just going for anything.”

The job market is tightening in the Inland Northwest, with unemployment rates rising in both Spokane and Kootenai counties. Still, the jobless rate in Spokane is stronger than the nationwide rate, and much better than some of the hardest-hit regions of the country. Kootenai County is a different picture – its unemployment rate surpassed the national average in October, for the first time in 46 months.

Mollie Patshkowski, business solutions manager for WorkSource in Spokane, said the local economy has definitely lost jobs in the past year. “But I think oftentimes a job seeker comes in here thinking we don’t have any jobs,” she said.

In fact, she and other job-market experts say, there are opportunities in some of the strongest segments of the economy – such as health care and education. Retail hiring is suffering now – and the seasonal, part-time jobs that usually come along with Christmas aren’t materializing in the numbers they usually do – as are opportunities in financial services and construction.

Plummer is looking for a warehouse job – a field in which she has nearly a decade of experience. She was at the Spokane WorkSource office last week looking over job listings with her 9-year-old son, Hunter.

She said there are jobs available, but that the competition for those jobs has gotten noticeably more intense over the past couple of months. She started her job search in early October, and she landed three interviews right off the bat. Since then, though, she’s had one interview, she said.

“You come down here and you have to wait on the computers most days,” she said. “It’s competitive. You apply and apply …”

‘Holding off’

Nationwide, the job picture is bleak and expected to get bleaker. More than 10 million people across the country are looking for work, and the unemployment rate stands at 6.5 percent, a 14-year high.

Spokane County’s jobless rate for October was 5.8 percent – up from 5.4 percent in September and 4.1 percent a year ago. In Kootenai County, the rate was 6.6 percent, more than double the rate of a year ago.

Doug Tweedy, regional labor economist for the state of Washington, said that even though Spokane County has lost jobs in recent months, the losses have been relatively small in the context of the countywide work force of more than 220,000 people.

“We’re tracking better than the rest of the country,” he said.

Going forward, job-seekers and employment experts said that employers are showing caution about adding positions in the weakening economy. Nancy Nelson, president of Humanix, a staffing and recruiting service in Spokane, said her firm has seen a drop in interest from employers for office and administrative positions.

“Companies are kind of holding off on adding that layer – getting by with the administrative support they already have,” she said.

John MacDonald, a 53-year-old Cheney man, has been looking for work since April, in customer service or a training position. He said he senses a little trepidation on the part of employers.

“Employers don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few months,” he said.

Hard luck

Pidliskey, the Spokane woman who’s been looking for work for almost a year, has suffered one setback after another. She’s living with a friend, sleeping on her couch, with her daughter. Her two sons live with their grandmother.

She makes weekly visits to the food bank, and shows up Tuesdays and Wednesday at the Women and Children’s Free Restaurant for dinner. She’s in the WorkFirst program, which requires her to spend seven hours a day looking for work in order to qualify for benefits, but she said she’s had no luck getting interviews.

“Nobody wants to hire me,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s because of the (lack of a) GED, the way I dress or too much experience.”

Her resume shows a variety of experience as a cashier or a cook – though the jobs were often short-term. She was laid off a year ago from her job as a cook at a rehabilitation center. She began taking classes to complete a GED a couple of years back, but couldn’t reach the minimum scores and eventually left the program.

She wiped away tears as she told her story.

“I’m trying to get a job so I can have a house back for me and my kids,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com.