Hard times hit hardest in Southeastern Mass.
Blue-collar workers especially vulnerable as jobless rate climbs
After 85 years in business, SWB New England Inc. abruptly closed its doors last October, leaving 140 workers without a job.
One of them is Sharrieff Davis, a 44-year-old Brockton resident who, like many other former employees of the West Bridgewater kosher food company, is still searching for steady work.
"It's hard finding a job that pays the bills," said Davis, who has been taking temp jobs and recently filed an unemployment claim. "I've drained my bank account at this stage. I don't know what the winter is going to bring."
All over the region, unemployment is slowly creeping upward. In August, Bristol County had a jobless rate of 6.7 percent - the highest in the state. And since August 2007, the number of unemployed in Bristol, Norfolk, and Plymouth counties rose by more than 8,750.
While the job market hasn't plunged to the depths of the early 1990s, when double-digit unemployment rates were common, there is growing concern that it could head that way. Last week's report that the number of nonfarm jobs dropped by 159,000 nationwide in September only provides more reason for pessimism.
The economic impact has been especially tough on the region, said Clyde W. Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
"Twenty-five years of economic development strategies and education reform have had little impact on improving wage and income levels in Southeastern Massachusetts," said Barrow. In the Bay State's "boutique economy," the greatest benefits went to the well-educated, white-collar professionals working in Boston or on the Route 128 belt.
"Now that we've taken care of those people," said Barrow, "what about the two-thirds of the population who don't hold a bachelor's degree? Who has been left behind? Southeastern Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley, the Berkshires. They are the ones who have been left behind . . . those who lost industrial and manufacturing jobs."
"It's very, very difficult," said Kathy Manson, president of the Plymouth/Bristol Central Labor Council, which represents union workers in Plymouth and Bristol counties. "In terms of the building trades, there are people working second or third jobs."
Chuck Craig, a 43-year-old carpenter, said he's hunting for a job because residential construction has dried up. In 2001, Craig said, he was building homes and work was plentiful. But the real estate market softened and jobs became scarce. He's been scrambling to find small remodeling jobs, or any work at all. He said he's on the verge of being evicted from his Taunton apartment.
"With the economy being the way it is, that work fell off the face of the earth," said Craig. "It's definitely not in a good situation at the moment. A lot of people I know are in the same boat."
Craig is among the growing number of job-seekers who have been flocking to the CareerWorks center in downtown Brockton. The center has been so busy, its training budget for the fiscal year has almost been exhausted, said Sheila Sullivan-Jardim, executive director of the Brockton Area Workforce Investment Board.
"More people are coming in, and they're worried," she said. "Fewer companies are hiring."
Russell Keith Desmond, a 47-year-old computer programmer, said he comes to CareerWorks almost every day to peruse job listings. Desmond's career took an unexpected turn in 2005, when he was laid off from a Westborough financial firm where he had worked for 13 years.
Recently, he had been doing contract work for a Canton company. Finding full-time work has been hard, said Desmond, and he's competing against recent college graduates for jobs that pay half what he made before. He has received a foreclosure notice on his Brockton home.
"Twenty years of experience has to count for something," said Desmond. "I'm at the point where I'm looking for anything."
For job-seekers with less education, it's taking even longer to find work, according to Sullivan-Jardim. "It comes down to lack of skills for the opportunities that are there," said Sullivan-Jardim.
The "skill gap" remains one of the big challenges to the job market in Southeastern Massachusetts, which has seen steep declines in blue-collar occupations in once staple industries such as manufacturing, textiles, shipbuilding, and fishing. Most factories have long been silent, many converted into condominiums.
Today, the fastest growing occupations are in healthcare and technology, which usually require a college degree. Even in other fields, employers increasingly want applicants to have at least an associate's degree. The Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development estimates that 46 percent of the job openings posted during the fourth quarter of 2007 required an associate's degree or higher.
That leaves folks with less education with fewer options. A large portion of Southeastern Massachusetts employees work in entry-level administrative support, retail sales, and food preparation - occupations that typically don't pay much.
Healthcare, social assistance, and retail jobs make up one-third of the jobs in the Brockton Workforce Area: Abington, Avon, Brockton, Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Easton, Hanson, Stoughton, West Bridgewater, and Whitman. In 2006, the average salary was $41,073, about $11,000 below the state average.
Brittney Whitlow, 22, recently left her job at a car dealership in Norwood to pursue other opportunities. She said she has worked in sales and retail jobs where employees were given more responsibilities and longer hours, while wages stayed the same.
"There's a gap between wages and the cost of living," she said. "Businesses are making cutbacks, and they see that they can get people to do the jobs of two, sometimes three people."
Disparities in income were detailed in a recent University of Massachusetts study (www.donahue.umassp.edu/docs/income-inequality), which showed middle- and upper-income families in Greater Boston and the North Shore made more economic gains than counterparts in Southeastern and Western Massachusetts. Family incomes in suburbs closest to Boston fared better than ones farther south.
Amid the bad economic news, however, there are several promising projects on the horizon.
The former South Weymouth Naval Air Station is being transformed into SouthField, which will consist of homes, retail shops, commercial buildings, and recreation facilities. The developers have agreed to use local union labor, according to Tim Sullivan, legislative and communications director for the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.
In Plymouth, executives of Plymouth Rock Studios say their planned movie studio would provide 2,000 jobs. They hosted a job workshop Sept. 24 that attracted so many that hundreds were turned away. More workshops will be held on Oct. 15 and Nov. 12. Visit www.rockstudios.com.
And on Oct. 23, the Massachusetts Regional Workforce Strategy Initiative will host a public meeting to discuss regional workforce issues. The meeting starts at 8:30 a.m. at Massasoit Community College in Brockton. Visit www.commcorp.org.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com. 