There were clear signs of an improving economy at the fifth annual Southwest Washington jobs fair Monday.
The line of job seekers waiting to meet employers at the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay was long, but it didn’t stretch as far as previous years.
And the number of employers seeking to hire, representing a range of industries from corrections to hospitality, reached an all-time high of more than 80.
U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, who hosts the job fair each year, said its genesis was simple.
Herrera Beutler asked employers: What needs to happen for you to make hires?
Part of the difficulty for those looking for new employees, the congresswoman was told, was finding workers with the right skill set. She tried to fix that by hosting the job fair.
Every year, iQ Credit Union has had a presence at the jobs fair.
“The first couple of years, it was killer crazy, lines out of the parking lot. It was a bad time,” said Jamie Dotson, a business development manager for iQ.
“I still remember meeting Robert, I met him right here, he talked to me, shook my hand. He started out as a teller, and he’s been promoted through the ranks,” she said, of a man who was hired three years ago. “We’ve met some great candidates.”
This year, the credit union is hiring for six different positions.
Clark County’s labor market is considerably rosier than it was when the job fair was first created.
In the 12 months ending in April, the county added 6,100 jobs, according to information from the state Employment Security Department.
But times are still tough for a lot of people. As many as 700 people showed up to Monday’s job fair.
“I’ve put in 60 applications a week for the last four months,” said Landon Merrill, 31, of Washougal.
Ana Drilea, 39, of Vancouver, is hoping to land a job in the hospitality industry. She received a flier in the mail from the congresswoman’s office and said she was pleased to discover the Southwest Washington jobs fair was one of the bigger ones she’s recently attended.
“I’ve been looking for work since January,” she said.
Lee Robison, 36, of Vancouver, has a part-time job at the Frito-Lay plant. But he’s hoping to put his master’s degree to use and possibly find something in management.
“I’m looking for something with more career potential,” he said.
The current unemployment rate in Clark County is 6.3 percent, compared with 7.6 percent a year ago, state Regional Labor Economist Scott Bailey said. The statewide unemployment rate is 5 percent.
“Again, 5 percent isn’t great by any means. … You go back to the late 1990s, we were at or under 4 percent for three or four years. That’s full employment. That was also the last time we had decent wage growth,” Bailey said.
A lot of people have also dropped out of the labor market and aren’t counted as unemployed. Many of them, Bailey said, are waiting for the economy to improve more before jumping back into the job market.
Gayle Nugent co-owns a company and is looking to make a life change. It’s been more than three decades since the 58-year-old looked for work, she said, and it can be intimidating. But she left the job fair with a purse full of brochures and some hope that several companies expressed a desire to hire veterans like her.
“It’s nice to know I’m marketable,” she said.
