Posted on: Sunday, July 11, 2004
More job seekers willing to hit road to find work
| • | Hiring has many on move |
By Adam Geller
Associated Press
On a recent afternoon, Chris Marquis finished work early to get home for his daughter's graduation party — so he checked out of the Cincinnati hotel he has lived in since January, and set off on what has become an all-too-familiar six-hour commute.
The long drive through parts of three states is small trade-off for a good paycheck, he says. When his last job was eliminated 14 months ago, Marquis calculated that finding a similar software position near home in Rockford, Ill., was unlikely. So he picked up, and family and furniture will soon follow, bound for where the jobs are.
The long-awaited improvement in the labor market — a gain of 1ý million positions since last August — is improving odds for job seekers. But some are hitting the road to secure work.
Recruiters and job placement counselors say more job seekers are moving for work, or showing a willingness to do so — particularly in regions and industries where hiring has lagged.
"They are looking elsewhere because it's been such a slow market here," said Laura Johannesmeyer, who coordinates a network of job clubs in the Kansas City area and runs the Career Investment Group, which meets weekly at a community college in Overland Park, Kan.
It's too early for the government to have figures on the number of Americans who have moved in the past year.
But a rebounding economy is likely spurring work-related moves as companies grow more willing to hire new employees or shift existing ones, and job seekers gain the confidence to move their families, demographer David Baxter said.
Many job seekers may have resisted moving sooner because of the uncertainties of the past few years, most recently those seeded by the continued fighting in Iraq, said Baxter, of the Urban Futures Institute, a demographic forecasting group based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
But as those doubts ease, the availability of good jobs will entice more Americans to move, he said.
"A really robust economy gets a lot of people moving," he said. "A slowdown in the economy makes people say 'I don't want to take that risk.' "
When the job market was hot in the late '90s, fewer than a third of the out-of-work executives coming through his Cleveland office moved for a new position, said Jim Atkinson, who manages the northeast Ohio and western New York area for Right Management Associates, a placement-assistance firm.
Now, about five out of seven are moving to find work, he said.
Just a few years ago, suburban Atlanta recruiter Aleshia Allen had trouble persuading some picky job seekers in high-demand fields to consider a job that would increase the length of their morning commute.
Now, many indicate an openness to drive significant distances despite Atlanta's notorious traffic or to move altogether, sometimes so readily that she cautions them to consider it more carefully because of a move's effect on their families.
"With a lot of these guys, I will make them talk to their wives before ... I send their resumŽ anywhere," said Allen, of staffing firm Think Energy Inc.
Moving for a job, especially to a city where a worker has no family, is a viable option for few. Many of those who lost lower-paying jobs don't have the cash needed to move. Employers rarely pick up the tab to move rank-and-file employees.
Fewer than 7 percent of all those who lost jobs in layoffs or closings ended up moving for work between 1999 and 2001, the most recent statistics tallied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
About 8 percent of so-called "long-tenured workers" — those who had been in their last jobs for at least three years — moved to take new jobs.
The number of Americans who moved to take new jobs or to look for work surged between March 2001 and March 2002, according to figures kept by the Census Bureau. But such moves fell back in the year ended in March 2003, a period that included the U.S. military buildup and invasion of Iraq.
The labor market's recovery remains a work in progress. The economy has added jobs for 10 consecutive months, but it is still down 1.2 million positions from its peak in early 2001.
Many remain reluctant to move for work. In a recent survey of 1,100 job seekers by personnel consulting firm DBM Inc., 34 percent indicated a willingness to move for a new job. But they were far outnumbered by the 82 percent willing to change industry or the 66 percent who'd sign on for less pay than their previous job.
Much of the reluctance to move is because so many families have two spouses working. If one loses a job, that second income can be critical.
But some workers, particularly those looking for management jobs, are finding that a willingness to pull up stakes in still-soft local employment markets can pay off with jobs that offer pay equal or better than those they lost.
Moving for a job is nothing new for Randy Blackman, a welding engineer who has logged eight moves during his career. Still, when he and his family arrived in Charlotte, N.C., in 1999, they figured they had reached the final stop.
When Blackman lost his job, he quickly found another in the same area. But when that position was also eliminated, he cast a wide net. The search landed him in Rochester, N.Y., last year, where he started a new job on his own, until his wife could join him six months later.
"If you want to eat, which is something I like to do, you have to make a sacrifice," Blackman said. "I knew that there might be some challenges and it turned out to be huge because the economy had gotten so rough down there nobody was hiring."
Other job seekers are picking up temporarily because there seem few other choices, taking limited-term contract positions in other cities, often leaving families behind. They view it as a short-term situation.
But Marquis is happy in the new job and the move from northern Illinois to southern Ohio. He's glad that his wife will soon join him.
"Actually, I feel good about it. I kind of feel like it's a new beginning," he said. "I don't think the timing is really what we would've wanted, but you don't always have that choice."
