Wilmington NC Economy

Now Hiring: Economy Absorbing New Arrivals

Article in the Sunday Star News 11/5/2006

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By Si Cantwell
Staff Writer
si.cantwell@starnewsonline.com

Wilmington NC Economy
The engine of growth in Southeastern North Carolina is driving a steady creation of jobs, putting residents to work in record numbers in New Hanover County. In recent months, New Hanover marked a milestone, with more than 100,000 residents reporting that they have jobs. At the same time, the county's unemployment rate in September was just 3.2 percent. That's below what economists term 'full employment,' where nearly everyone who wants a job has one.

To William W. Hall, senior economist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, a jobless rate that low coming at the same time that the region's population is increasing means county employers are hiring new arrivals as well as putting formerly jobless folks to work.

And while many employers say they can find workers when they need them, to Allen Young, district manager of Boddie-Noell Enterprises Inc., it means putting 'Now Hiring' signs on Hardee's restaurants in the Ogden area to find enough workers to keep the burgers and shakes moving.

Similar growth in Brunswick, Pender

September jobless rates were also relatively low in Brunswick and Pender counties, at 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent respectively. That's considerably below the state September jobless rate of 4.9 percent and the national rate of 4.6 percent. The U.S. Labor Department reported Friday that the national rate fell to 4.4 percent in October, a five-year low.

Brunswick's jobless rate has swung between 4.8 percent and 3.4 percent this year. That's a marked improvement over the early to mid-1990s, when the county had persistently high rates of unemployment, often in the double digits. There weren't enough new jobs created to employ all the new residents moving in.

In the past couple of years, there haven't been any of those big manufacturing layoffs that periodically caused heartbreak in Brunswick County and other parts of Southeastern North Carolina during the 1990s, said Chuck Spangler, local veterans employment representative in Brunswick's Employment Security Commission office.

Today, he said, 'Our conditions basically parallel New Hanover County. It's difficult to find fast-food workers.'

According to the state Employment Security Commission, an estimated 100,053 New Hanover residents reported having jobs in September, up from 95,576 in January. A state survey found that New Hanover crossed the 100,000 mark in July.

Hall's figures, which show that level being reached in September, are 'seasonally adjusted,' accounting for hiring upswings that typically occur during the summer and the holiday retail season.

The increase in the number of people employed in New Hanover County is driven in part by formerly jobless people finding work. But more than that, 'It's also people who have migrated into the county taking jobs,' Hall said.

According to state estimates, New Hanover's population has risen from 160,327 in 2000 to 180,358 in July 2005. During the same period, the population in Brunswick went from 73,141 to 89,463, while Pender saw an increase from 41,082 to 46,538.

The lure of benefits

So what does it all mean for employers? For most of them, it's been business as usual.

Tom Nettleman, manager of the Corning optical fiber plant, said his company tends to hire more 'from the underemployed than the unemployed.' His applicants tend to be people with jobs hoping for better pay and benefits. In the past year or so, he said, he has seen a decline in the number of job applicants, but he attributes that to people not realizing that Corning has recovered from its well-publicized layoffs earlier in the decade.

New Hanover Regional Medical Center is the area's largest employer, with 4,700 employees. Keith Strawn, vice president of human resources, said the only problem he has is filling very specialized positions such as histology technicians, who work with tissue samples in diagnostic labs. Wilmington isn't exactly bursting with histology techs.

'Across the nation, each place has only a handful,' Strawn said.

The hospital's pay and benefits draw people to jobs with more modest salaries. Even part-time jobs without benefits often hold the promise of a promotion, so they're not hard to fill, Strawn said.

Boddie-Noell's Young said Hardee's is generally able to find enough workers except in the busy Military Cutoff-Market Street corridor north to Ogden, where a variety of restaurants and stores compete for employees.

'We need more people out there to work,' he said.

‘We've been so explosive'

Walker Biggs, manager of the Employment Security Commission office for New Hanover and Pender counties, has been watching local job growth since he first started with the ESC in January 1990, when there were an estimated 60,170 employed residents in New Hanover.

'We've been so explosive,' the Wilmington native said. 'I think back to the 1960s, we were really a sleepy little Southern town, not bustling and busting loose.'

He said he's seen the fastest growth in the health field, which includes four of the 25 largest employers: New Hanover Regional Medical Center, Assisted Care Health & Home Care Specialists Inc., Wilmington Health Associates and the Davis Health Care Center.

Manufacturing has held its own, he said, rattling off the names of seven or eight of the area's biggest plants, including Corning, General Electric and DAK Americas. And Wilmington's emerging status as a pharmaceutical research center, with firms such as PPD and AAIPharma based here, has brought many new high-paying jobs.

He believes wage growth hasn't slacked off, although not everyone participates.

'There may be more low-paying jobs, but some of the higher paying jobs are paying more,' he said. 'Tell that to the person that lost the $15-an-hour job and now works for $9 an hour, they're not going to see it that way. Some of those jobs have gone away, replaced by lower paying jobs.'

Si Cantwell: 343-2364

si.cantwell@starnewsonline.com