162,000 people find work, but road ahead is steep
SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 AT 12:05 A.M.
The strongest jobs report in three years gave new hope to millions of Americans who’ve been thrown out of work in the worst employment market in a generation.
The Labor Department reported yesterday that the economy added 162,000 jobs in March, with employment gains at factories, stores and hospitals. About a third of the growth came from temporary census hiring, but economists were encouraged that the private sector added 123,000 jobs for the month, the most since May 2007.
Local experts said they are spotting signs of improvement in San Diego County’s job market, most notably at temporary-employment firms that are often the first to see demand increase.
“We’ve started to see customers we hadn’t heard from for a year or two starting to call us again,” said Phil Blair, who oversees the local operations of the Manpower employment agency.
To be sure, the employment picture remains weak. The national unemployment rate came in at 9.7 percent for the third straight month, and hiring is not expected to be robust enough to bring that down significantly anytime soon.
San Diego County and the rest of California have seen higher unemployment than the country as a whole, largely because of the real estate collapse. The most recent readings, for February, were 10.6 percent for San Diego and 12.5 percent for the state.
Local economist Kelly Cunningham said he thinks hiring could pick up somewhat in the spring, partly tied to seasonal factors such as tourist attractions adding staff for the busier summer season.
Overall, he said, it could be some time before large numbers of businesses have enough confidence in their prospects to ramp up hiring.
“We are seeing job losses tapering off,” said Cunningham, who is with the National University System Institute for Policy Research. “That’s about the best we can say for San Diego.”
The most recent employment report for the county showed gains in areas that included educational and health services, business services and retail trade.
Nationally, yesterday’s report showed that the education industry led job creation, followed by health services and government. Those sectors, plus others such as hospitality, manufacturing and retail, will continue hiring as the recovery picks up, economists say.
In San Diego, some hotels have begun hiring because of higher occupancies during spring break, and others will soon add positions to accommodate increased summer travel. Many of those jobs, though, will be strictly seasonal.
The 420-room Hard Rock Hotel San Diego downtown has filled roughly half of its 40 open positions in a broad array of hotel operations, as well as its spa, restaurants and lounges. The decision to hire that many workers was prompted by signs that business was picking up, both among leisure travelers and those coming for group meetings, general manager Matt Greene said.
Daniel Velasquez, who recently relocated from a hotel job in Sedona, Ariz., started this week as an engineer at the Hard Rock, which selected him from among 170 applicants.
“I came for a better opportunity and had heard that the Hard Rock was a great place to work,” said Velasquez, 26.
While he was fortunate to already be employed when applying for the position, he said he has friends with engineering backgrounds who are unemployed and having a hard time finding work.
“Your technical skill has to be high to get into a property like this,” Velasquez noted.
At a job fair hosted in February by the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa, more than 500 applicants showed up for 30 positions.
At the Paradise Point Resort & Spa on Mission Bay, a busy spring break this year is an indicator that summer business will be equally strong, necessitating additional hires, hotel manager Pat Rizco said. While last year the resort hired 125 extra employees for the summer, this year there will probably be 200 workers who will start in mid-June and stay through Labor Day, he added.
“We’ve seen a tremendous upswing in demand over the spring break, and in years past, that’s been a telltale sign that there will be a good amount of business in the summer months,” Rizco said. “Last spring it was very weak.”
Also hiring are local theme parks, which are gearing up for booming summer business. SeaWorld plans to expand its staffing from 2,500 to as many as 4,000, while Legoland California in Carlsbad plans to have 400 to 500 more workers this summer, including 200 employees to staff a water park that is under construction.
Cunningham, at National University, said other areas of relative strength in the local job market have included the biotechnology and software industries.
One biotech company that plans to hire in the coming months is Carlsbad’s Regulus Therapeutics, which is working on a new class of drugs based on so-called microRNAs.
Like many of the region’s biotech companies, Regulus is fairly small, at 35 employees. But Chief Executive Kleanthis Xanthopoulos plans to add a dozen more in the near term and hit 100 within a few years.
With a partnership with drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, Regulus is in a better position than some biotechs that have scrambled to raise money in recent years. But Xanthopoulos said the struggles of other companies also help recruiting.
“It’s much easier than it used to be,” he said. “But identifying the talent that complements the company is always a challenge.”
In many industries, hiring remains weak. One indicator: Mike Cully, president of the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce, asked attendees at an event yesterday morning if they were hiring.
Only one of the roughly 30 businesses said yes, and that one was temporary-employment firm XL Staffing of El Cajon.
“Companies are still tentatively looking at the economy and asking, ‘Are we done yet?’ ” Cully said. “They’re looking at this as more than a typical recession, and they aren’t sure we’re through it yet.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
