Job fair attendees hopeful, but not optimistic
GREENSBORO — Ron Inch used a choice phrase to describe the economy.
“It sucks right now,” said Inch, an unemployed Winston-Salem resident. “I don’t see it getting any better. There’s no work out there.”
Inch found himself in unusual territory Wednesday — attending his first job fair.
Inch and his wife drove to Four Seasons Town Centre to attend the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce 2010 Job Expo and Franchise Fair. So did more than 1,000 others looking for work.
Two weeks ago, Inch, 54, laid himself off. He closed his framing contractor business, putting himself and five employees out of work.
Nobody was building. Last year, he framed two houses. In a good year, he would do 14.
“It just kept going down,” Inch said of the business he’s been in for the past 32 years. “I’m getting out of the construction business.”
With that, Inch and his wife set off to visit more prospective employers.
Organizers said the fair featured more than 50 local organizations — everything from Aflac to the U.S. Army — which were looking to hire part- and full-time workers.
But Jerry Little, 41, of Clemmons called the positions he found “starter jobs,” the kind of things he did 20 years ago.
Little, married with two children, lost his job as a flooring company manager in 2009. From then until May, he worked as a consultant, until that job ran out.
Given enough time, he feels he can find work.
“I’m not discouraged, yet,” he said. “I’m looking for anything.”
But Little says he’s not optimistic about the economic future.
“All that talk about (helping) the economy is a lot of smoke and mirrors,” he said. “Recovery is a long time away, maybe two to five years, if it ever recovers.”
But Eleanor Jeffers, 53, of Greensboro left feeling optimistic.
Jeffers, who lost her job at American Express two months ago, left her resume at half a dozen tables set up in the mall’s center court. She said she has an interview today about a sales position with Time-Warner Cable.
“They’re having a job fair,” she said. “That means that somebody is hiring.”
The down side is that most employers got far more applications than they have positions to fill.
StoneMor Partners, which operates a number of cemeteries in the Triad, anticipated getting 100 applications for 20-25 sales jobs.
Bob Case, a manager at Lakeview Memorial Park in Greensboro, said the people who stopped by his table were frustrated in their job searches.
“There are a lot of people out there who are fed up with applying at businesses that aren’t hiring,” Case said. “I am hearing that almost every time.”
Ron Inch has just started looking for a job and he already sounded frustrated. That could be because he’s watched the construction industry decline in recent years.
And he didn’t anticipate finding anyone at the fair that offers the kind of work he wants. He’d like to be a probation officer.
Inch said retirement isn’t an option. Plus, he says, he’s not eligible for unemployment because he was self- employed.
And he and his wife are eating further into their savings, a process which started when the economy began to sour.
Discouragement has already set in.
“I don’t know the answer,” he said. “I’m behind the eight ball.”
Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Local residents at a job fair.
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