With unemployment low, employers struggle to find enough workers

John Boyle | The Citizen-Times

With unemployment at 3.2 percent in Buncombe County, the job market should be all unicorns and butterflies, right?

Not so fast.

While the job market is fantastic right now for employees, it's a different story for the companies that employ those workers. That microscopic unemployment rate for April — the lowest in the state — means employers in many cases cannot find enough workers.

"The challenge is real," said Jason Lorenz, branch manager for Human Technologies Inc. in Asheville, which finds workers for about a half-dozen manufacturing companies, including several in the automotive sector.

"Between all the companies I work for, I have 50 openings right now," Lorenz said.

The market is so hot for employees, he's having trouble filling jobs in the $10-$12 an hour range, typically entry-level positions in manufacturing. He's usually got applicants in the $12-$13 an hour range, but even in some of the higher ranges, which require more skills, Lorenz can't find enough workers.

This year he's recruited close to 30 people for CNC machinists (computer numeric control) positions, which pay considerably more than entry level. He simply cannot find enough maintenance technicians, the workers that factories and other businesses rely on to keep the places running.

"With maintenance techs, you're talking $22-$30 an hour," Lorenz said. "If you could give me 10 of those, I could put them all to work today."

Rick Elingburg, who's been in the employment game for nearly 42 years, heads up the Asheville NC Works Career Center, formerly the Employment Security Commission. He has trouble recalling a time when employers were struggling so much to find enough workers.

Statewide, the unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, but in the Asheville metropolitan statistical area, which includes the counties of Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison, it was 3.6 percent in April. Traditionally, economists consider anything under 5 percent to be full employment.

"We could run a job fair every week — and I'm talking about ones like the big one we run every year in January — and not be able to help the employers find everyone they need," Elingburg said. "I don't know that I've ever seen it this low."

The market really started tightening last year, "getting more difficult month by month," Elingburg said. Employers are even having trouble finding enough part-time workers because there are so many job opportunities right now, he said.

Employers' needs run "across the board," Elingburg said, with the tourism and hospitality sectors being "white-hot," leading companies to boost wages and even offer bonuses for some particularly difficult-to-fill positions. But demand is also sky high in health care and office work, manufacturing and transportation.

Asheville resident Amanda Morgan, a 34-year-old single mom, is one of those benefiting from the jobs boom. Later this month she'll start a job working the front desk of a local medical office.

"I'm so grateful they gave me a chance, especially right out of school," said Morgan, who completed her degree in office administration at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in December and then completed a medical records course through Goodwill Industries.

Morgan has been a hairdresser the past four years, and while the money is good, she was looking for a higher-paying job with steady hours and good benefits.

"I feel like I’m making a good step up," Morgan said, adding that she eventually wants to move up into office management.

Some companies looking overseas

Chris Maslin, senior director of talent and organizational development at the Biltmore Co., which operates the Biltmore Estate, said the company keeps a "crucial top 10" jobs with culinary positions at the top of the list. With 2,350 employees, the estate keeps careful tabs on its employment rate, which right now stands at about 92-93 percent of positions filled.

That 7 percent job vacancy rate is far from crippling, but it is trending higher. About a year ago, the job vacancy rate stood around 5 percent on the estate, which has seven full-service restaurants and two hotels, with a total of 418 rooms.

The estate has signing bonuses for some of the hardest jobs to fill, and it has made wage adjustments, bumping up starting pay for the hard to fill positions to $10.50-$13 an hour.

The company is having the hardest time finding line chefs or candidates with a two-year degree from culinary school and some experience, as well as housekeepers for the hotels.

That will only worsen in booming Buncombe County, where multiple hotels are set to open this year.

"In the reports I've seen, I think within the last 18 months to two years, we're supposed to see 1,600 more hotel rooms come online, and many more restaurants," Maslin said.

That will leave employers scrambling to snag workers out of a labor pool that won't be big enough. The total nonfarm employment In the Asheville MSA in April stood at 191,200 people.

Biltmore, like several other local companies, has started looking overseas to fill positions, combing European programs that train hospitality workers, as well as programs in Jamaica, to fill slots.

It's a laborious process that typically requires the employer to hire an attorney and prove it has exhausted attempts to hire locally. But Maslin says the estate and other larger local companies are running out of options.

"I fully believe we have reached that tipping point, and what people are having to do is recruit," he said. "There's certainly not a local labor population that's physically capable and willing to do the work across the board for all the jobs we've created."

Ken Partin, CEO of Givens Estates in southern Buncombe County, says his company looked into hiring from overseas but have not made the leap yet. With apartments, nursing homes and assisted living facilities among its offerings, Givens has become another large employer, with 520 workers.

Certified nursing aides and housekeepers are particularly difficult to find.

"I’ve been doing this for 36 years, and it's probably the most competitive I’ve ever seen it," Partin said. "When the economy is good, it's an employees' market, and when times are bad it's an employers' market."

Amy Staton, human resources director for Givens, which has the operation in Arden and the Highland Farms retirement and nursing home enterprise in Black Mountain, said they have 16 openings at Givens and 11 at Highland Farms. That puts their employment vacancy rate at about 6 percent at both facilities.

Their most critical need is for Certified Nursing Aides, where pay starts in the $10.75 range.

"That's our most unique challenge for staffing right now," Staton said, adding that not enough students are entering the program at A-B Tech to satisfy their needs. "We've started a program where we're attempting to 'grow our own,' so to speak."

In a partnership with A-B Tech, Givens is sponsoring some employees to go to through CNA training, helping with some expenses — and holding a job for them when they graduate.

'Really tight labor market'

The area's singing economy has labor force participation rates rising as well, meaning people are coming back into the labor market, looking for jobs, said Angela Dills, the Gimelstob-Landry Distinguished Professor of Regional Economic Development at Western Carolina University.

That "really tight labor market," as Dills describes it, should drive up wages.

"In the past 10 years, sometimes unemployment rates fell due to people exiting the labor force, likely due to discouragement, rather than because people were finding jobs," Dills said. "In Buncombe County now, though, the labor force is growing, as is the labor force participation rate."

She estimates Buncombe's labor force participation rate is back up to just over 64 percent.

"This is not as high as it was in 2007, but it is an increase over more recent years," Dills said. "In 2015, the labor force participation rate was 62.5 percent."

At Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, employers are willing to chip in to have employees trained for some jobs.

During the peak of the Great Recession, A-B Tech stopped offering some courses in the construction trades, as work just dried up. The college recently restarted its masonry class, and a local employer stepped in to pay the registration fees for six students, according to Shelley White, vice president of economic and workforce development/continuing education.

"I would say all sectors are booming," White said, adding that the school's advanced manufacturing training program has a placement rate in the 80-90-percent range. "That means they have a job when they finish the program."

In a typical year, A-B Tech will have 8,000-10,000 students in its workforce and continuing education classes, White said.

"We've seen a significant increase this spring in enrollment," White said, adding that enrollment in regional workforce programs were up by about 400 students.

She also mentioned Duke Energy's upcoming project to dismantle its coal-fired plant, while building a gas-fired plant to replace it.

"Duke Energy will be hiring up to 1,000 people to build that power plant, and some of those people will come from outside the area, but they'll also be drawing from the labor pool here to help some of the lesser skilled jobs," White said.

Elingburg said he was in a recent meeting when that project came up and someone mentioned Duke would likely need 800-1,000 workers.

"They'll have two projects at the same time," he said. "Everybody in the room was looking around as if to say, 'Good luck!'"

WNC unemployment rates by county for April

Avery — 4.4

Buncombe — 3.2

Cherokee — 4.5

Clay — 4.4

Graham — 6.7

Haywood — 3.8

Henderson — 3.5

Jackson — 4.4

McDowell — 3.9

Macon — 4.5

Madison — 4.0

Mitchell — 5.3

Polk — 3.8

Rutherford — 5.9

Transylvania — 4.0

Yancey — 4.3

Source: North Carolina Department of Commerce