Employers find difficulty hiring due to low unemployment rate
When passing by different stores, businesses, and organizations in Duluth there are all kinds of different hiring signs, small, big and even glowing.
According to The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) regional analyst Erik White, companies and organizations are having a harder time finding people to fill up open job spots.
White said he thinks the reason that these signs keep popping up is because of the unemployment rate being historically low.
“Low unemployment rate is better economically but on the other side of the spectrum there is job openings and what we are seeing in the region is that we are getting an increase of job openings that are not getting filled,” White said. “That’s kind of the dilemma. We have a low unemployment rate but high job opening.”
This means that organizations who are hiring need to be more creative and find new ways to make sure they find people that can fill their open spots.
Residential Services Inc (RSI) a non-profit organization who support people with disabilities and mental illness, currently has a 10 percent vacancy rate and are in need of employees. For the last six months they have hosted walk-in interviews on Thursdays. This is something RSI’s Human Resources Director Julie Kichak think benefits the organization.
“We found it to be effective,” Kichak said. “It varies for the week. Some weeks we get an average of about five people that we will end up moving forward with.”
“I think that walk-in interviews will work for organizations that have a lot more entry level positions to fill and don’t have too many qualification requirements,” Kichak said.
White can see a pattern that the health care industry has a hard time over all hiring people. One of the reasons is due to the importance of real human contact.
“Healthcare can’t be replaced by robots,” White said. “You need a heartbeat to have a job. You need a person to fill that job.”
This is something Kichak agrees with. She says that when hiring, they look for people who are passionate about wanting to make a difference in the life of people with disabilities.
RSI is working with multiple platforms to try to spread the word about their walk-in interviews, they share it on social media such as Facebook, along with the job site Indeed, and advertise it in newspapers.
Duluth WorkForce Center is also hosting different types of events so they can find people to fill the spots of companies that are hiring. The next job fair that will be hosted April 12.
White explains that almost once a week there are also companies having hiring events at the workforce center, and that most of the time the jobs are in health care.
White also said that the population of Duluth is older, which means that there are fewer people looking for work. He believes that Duluth would benefit from having a population increase.
Even though the low unemployment rate is making it harder to find employees, people who earlier has been struggling to find work because of different difficulties have a easier time finding a job.
“We are seeing greater amount of people getting jobs especially from those with different barriers or different backgrounds,” White said. “That’s positive, but you are also getting to a point where business isn’t able to expand. There isn’t workforce to expand so they are having a difficult time and it is also creating a different competition.”
Editor’s note: A quote from Julie Kichak has been adjusted to have correct grammar.
