Job center struggles with massive need

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

The doors aren’t even open at WorkSource Portland Metro East, and yet a line is already starting to form outside the squat tan office building.

It’s just before 8 a.m., and people are anxious to start looking for work.

By 9 a.m., the publicly funded job and retraining center will be overflowing with clients. People who once held jobs as chefs, truck drivers, industrial buyers, retirement home managers and car dealers will pass through the doors. Some will have master’s degrees and others won’t have graduated from high school; none will have had any luck — yet — finding a job in this hard economy.

Like hundreds of other job training and resource centers across the country, the staff at this center in a high-poverty area of Portland, Ore., will spend the day struggling to keep up with a huge increase in demand, made more difficult by several years of substantial budget cuts.

“This is unprecedented,” said Andrew McGough, executive director of Worksystems Inc.. Worksystems is a workforce development agency that runs the publicly funded WorkSource center along with a local community college and the state employment department.

The center registered 2,572 people for its services in March alone, a 42 percent increase over last year. The seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate in the Portland metropolitan area hit 10.7 percent in February, about double what it was a year earlier, amid steep job cuts in both blue- and white-collar industries.

To cope with the skyrocketing needs, the center has more than tripled the number of workshops it offers, added Saturday hours and hired some temporary staff.

Meanwhile, it’s had to grapple with severely depleted resources. The center saw its federal Workforce Investment Act funding, which pays for training, slashed by 34 percent in 2007, and by another 30 percent in 2008, said Kay Lopez, supervisor of workforce development. Separate funding for the employment department resources at the center has remained flat.

To cope with the cuts, they have had layoffs, and some staffers took 15 days off without pay. Now, the center is hoping that money from the federal stimulus package will help make up some of the lost training budget.

Other job training and resource centers across the country are facing the same woes, as more and more jobless Americans seek help from agencies that have been hit by stiff federal budget cuts in recent years. Rich Hobbie, executive director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, expects the federal stimulus money to also help those cash-strapped agencies, but he notes that the challenges go beyond just money.

Craig Mitchelldyer for msnbc.com Kelli Lord uses the computer to look or food service jobs at the Worksource Portland Metro East employment center in Portland, Ore.

Many such organizations also are struggling to help the growing numbers of people who haven’t typically sought out such help, including college-educated workers and those who have had steady employment for decades.

“(They’ve) never been unemployed before, hence never really had to look for a job,” Hobbie said.

‘They don’t know what to do’
But in this recession, many are finding it difficult to snag a new job in their field, or facing the more worrisome problem that the industry they’ve worked in for decades is in decline. They need help putting together resumes, learning how to apply for jobs online or getting started in a retraining program.

Babette Bastion, a business employment specialist who spends her days helping people in the computer center, said the losses can be hardest for older workers who have been in the same field for years and are resistant even to learning how to search and apply for jobs online.

“They are being let go and they don’t know what to do,” she said.

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