Need a job? There are plenty out there

By KRISTI ALBERTSON

It's an employee's market with hundreds of jobs open

The Daily Inter Lake

If you're looking for work in the Flathead Valley, the odds of finding gainful employment are definitely in your favor.

As of Thursday, there were 620 job openings in the valley listed on the Flathead Job Service Workforce Center Web site. Local job services are swamped with requests from increasingly harried employers. Businesses in nearly every industry are displaying signs advertising available positions.

"It's an employee's market right now," said Virginia Sloan, business advocate with the Flathead Job Service Workforce Center.

On any given day, the Flathead Job Service Web site has an average of 125 more job openings listed than it did last year, she said - and last year was a record year.

One day last month, the site reached its all-time high with 659 listings.

Scott Lee, delivery fleet manager at Fun Beverage, has never seen a labor shortage this severe in his 20 years with the business. Every department in the company is currently looking for workers.

"We're all just fighting to get good employees in," he said. "Even the staffing services are having a hard time finding us people."

That's because local staffing services are buried under a heap of requests from desperate employers. Sloan estimates the valley has seen job opportunities increase more than 100 percent in the last four years.

And as competition between employers rises, so do wages. Starting wages for unskilled laborers can be anywhere from $12 to $16 an hour, she said.

"There are some businesses who still pay $5.15 an hour, but people that pay that have a hard time hiring," she said.

And people earning minimum wage have a hard time living here long enough to keep working, said Kristen Heck, president of LC Staffing Service.

"Wages have gone up dramatically in the last two years, but the cost of living has also gone up dramatically," she said.

"We live in a very attractive area, and I think a lot of people would like to live here, but if you can't afford to pay rent or make house payments, you can't afford to work here."

The tight labor market has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it's a sign of a booming economy and rapid growth. In May, Flathead County had record low unemployment: 3.6 percent.

"Businesses are doing well in the Flathead," Heck said. "And when you're doing more business than you can keep up with, you need to hire."

This is creating more mid-management to upper-level positions, she added.

"Due to local business growth, we see more professional opportunities than in years past," she said. "However, we still need more professional and technical job opportunities in the Flathead."

On the downside, fewer workers means longer work weeks and more stress for business owners and managers.

"It seems like it's worse now than it's ever been," said Derek Benson, manager of Applebee's in Kalispell, which has been advertising for help for weeks.

"We're actually what resembles being fully staffed right now," he said. "It was a three-month battle, but it looks like we're finally fully staffed."

Fun Beverage still needs workers. Because the company is short a driver, Lee drives routes himself and works 65 to 70 hours each week.

The real problem, he said, is a lack of competent, reliable workers. The company has had a posting with a local job service for 60 days. In those two months, Lee has seen three qualified applicants.

"It's hard to find people right now, and the few applicants you do get aren't qualified," he said. "You take a chance hiring them, and multiple times you have people not show up on their first day.

"You'll hire five and get one good one," he added. "Or maybe I'll see one that will stick around."

Some businesses have simply come to expect high turnover. The sign in front of Dairy Queen in Whitefish reads, "We're hiring for real," a recent change from "We're hiring again."

"We have that sign up every summer," owner Chad Ross said. "We have lots of turnover from teenagers who decide they can go elsewhere."

But it's not just young workers who are constantly on the move, Heck said.

"One of the issues I see in a tight labor market is that employees tend to hop around from job to job, a year here, two years there, sometimes less than that," she said. "And what's really sad to see is they're really selling themselves short by doing that."

Sloan said she believes employers are at least partly responsible for this phenomenon.

"People say they want a steady line of people in their door applying. I say, why don't you make the exit door stop?" she said.

In the long run, it's less expensive to retain employees than it is to constantly hire and train new people, she said. To do that, employers have to create an environment attractive to workers.

"Your employees walk out the door at the end of the day," she said. "What are you doing to make sure they come back again?"

Heck doesn't expect turnover rates to decrease anytime soon.

"I think until unemployment rates come back up, you're going to see a lot of people hopping around," she said. "But again, I think that comes back to, 'I can't afford to live.' So I'm hoping that we, as a community, will look to provide affordable - classy, but affordable - housing in the valley."

Even with the high turnover and the fact that the staff triples during the summer, Ross says Dairy Queen isn't feeling the labor shortage crunch.

"This is probably my best summer for finding people," he said. "I'm actually doing OK. Well, at this moment, this week, I'm OK. Call me next week."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.