found this article in today's Dallas Morning News and thought it was relevant
http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews...obs.27a7f.html
Jobless wonder: Where's relief?
Reports show economy on upswing, but many aren't seeing results
09:31 PM CST on Friday, October 31, 2003
By VICTOR GODINEZ and SUZANNE MARTA / The Dallas Morning News
Patricia Feager lost her human resources job at Abbott Laboratories in Irving more than a year ago. Over the past 12 months, she's sent out hundreds of résumés. She's gotten two interviews.
With school loans and a mortgage to pay – and expenses pared to the bone – she's made a career shift and gotten her real estate license. But that's also proved a difficult path. In the past six months, she's sold just one house.
"A lot of contracts fall through because people are worried about the economy," she said.
Ms. Feager is trying to stay positive but says she's devoting her energy to survival.
For her and millions across the country, Thursday's Commerce Department report that showed the economy growing at a staggering 7.2 percent rang hollow. A Friday report showed consumer spending dropped 0.3 in September even as income rose by the same amount.
"Thank God I don't have any kids to support," she said. "I haven't bought shoes for a year. There's just nothing more I can do to cut back."
Her story echoes across North Texas.
In the Dallas area, 143,000 people were unemployed and looking for work in September. Nationwide, roughly 2.7 million jobs have been lost since the recession ended in 2001. And last year, Dallas lost 55,000 jobs – one of the factors that Mayor Laura Miller cited for the creation of a Jobs Task Force this summer.
That task force met for the first time Friday to discuss strategies for addressing the rise in local unemployment. In attendance were TXU Corp.'s president and chief executive, Earl Nye, and AMR Corp. president and CEO Gerard Arpey.
The task force members talked about bringing more workers into areas such as health care that are experiencing shortages.
They pondered creating new job-training programs, promoting economic development and ensuring that more local students get at least a high school education.
"I'm very optimistic about where this is going to go, especially with the caliber of people that are involved," Ms. Miller said after the meeting.
She said she expects the group of executives and consultants to come up with solutions quickly.
"We don't want to just be talking 10 years out," she said. "We want to see some immediate results from this."
TXU's Mr. Nye suggested a goal of creating roughly 5,000 jobs in the next couple of years – a goal that other task force members called realistic.
"In the short term we should aim to create several thousand jobs for the local unemployed," said J. Puckett, vice president and director of The Boston Consulting Group, which is crunching data for the task force and helping to prepare reports. "In the long term, we ought to aim at having a lower unemployment rate than the national average."
The unemployment rate in the Dallas area stands at 6.9 percent, compared with 6.1 percent nationally.
Lacking a catalyst
But some experts say that if the economy can't produce a significant number of jobs even when it is expanding, those jobs may simply not exist.
"If this economy cannot create jobs when the economy is growing at 7.2 percent, you wonder if it's ever going to create jobs," said Chicago-based outplacement expert John Challenger.
The creation of more than 20 million jobs during the 1990s was largely sparked by the emergence of the technology industry, he said. This time, there doesn't seem to be another industry ready to re-ignite the job market.
In fact, the technology boom of the last decade led to such a rise in productivity that employers don't need to do much hiring right now, Mr. Challenger said.
"I think that the economy has got to catch up with what this technology can do, and then the next job explosion can happen," he said.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, said that employers might be feeling once burned, twice shy.
"There's reason to be concerned that businesses may not act as they have historically because they've been so scarred by the events that have taken place over the last few years," he said.
One of the factors holding companies back is skyrocketing health care costs, Mr. Zandi said. Thursday's Employment Cost Index report revealed that benefits costs are up 6.5 percent from one year ago.
This will prevent companies from loosening the belt. At the very least, he said, it will compel them to continue hiring temporary staff, as they don't have to offer benefits to temporary workers.
"It's not only that health care costs are rising today, it's the expectation that they will continue to go up tomorrow," Mr. Zandi said.
Not enough good people
Joel Allison, president and chief executive of Baylor Health Care System and one of the members of the mayor's task force, said there are thousands of jobs available right now – but not enough qualified workers.
"We're much like the rest of the health care industry, with the need for nurses and for allied health professionals," he said.
Most nursing schools get more applicants than they can accept because of a limited number of faculty, he said. Experts say there's a shortage of roughly 40,000 nurses in Texas.
Mr. Allison said he hopes that the group's final report will include a recommendation to seek increased funding for nursing teacher salaries.
Ms. Miller said health care isn't the only industry where job openings are going unfilled because of a lack of qualified workers.
"I've had a receptionist position open in my office for six months and I can't find anybody for the job," she said. "We've been advertising it publicly, and I can't get someone in here who is personable, can answer the phone in a courteous manner and write a letter, all at the same time."
Holding out
Some job-seekers say they're hearing good indications in the job market.
Jennifer Schuder, 32, lost her marketing job four weeks ago when her employer restructured operations after an acquisition.
With four interviews under her belt and her severance running out, Mrs. Schuder is ready for something to come through. Lately, she's pushed herself to keep a regular schedule, getting up with an alarm and working household projects into her day.
"It's the sitting around waiting that is the hardest," she said.
Still, news about a growing U.S. economy helps her stay positive.
"I feel like things are starting to open up," she said. "People keep calling me to tell me about openings, so that's huge."
But for people like Irving resident Mark Breheny, who lost his job as an investment broker for Guaranty Bank three and a half months ago, the job market feels more uncertain.
"There are a lot of us out there applying for the same jobs," he said. "The supply just outweighs the demand."
He gets online by 9 a.m. each morning to scour job boards, a process than can be frustrating because his computer is so old. He's also working on getting his certification as a chartered financial analyst in hopes that it will make him more marketable.
Positive feedback from potential employers has helped Mr. Breheny feel as if it's just a matter of time before something comes through. But every time he reads a story about outsourcing, he gets nervous.
"It's not just manufacturing," he said. "There are analysts in India who are willing to do the same work for less money, and that really hits home."
Staff writer Danielle DiMartino contributed to this report.
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The FIRST time in a YEAR we haven't made Goal (DAMN DAMN DAMN)!
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