Kirkland Murray and the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corp. are facing the problem
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August 2, 2009
It's a turbulent time for the local job market. The unemployment rate in Anne Arundel has more than doubled over the past two years, reaching 6.9 percent in June.
Meanwhile, Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corp. officials have seen the number of new registrants at their six "one-stop" employment centers jump 66 percent in the past year to 8,260 from 4,986.
Now, Kirkland Murray, president and chief executive officer of the organization, said his group is using $719,000 of federal stimulus money to take the "show out on the road" by launching new outreach efforts and programs to help local residents get back on payroll while helping youth find jobs. The stimulus money about doubles the group's federal allocation.
"The goal with those stimulus dollars is to reach more people," he said.
Murray sat down with The Capital last week to talk about the rising unemployment problem, and what his group plans to do about it. Here are some excerpts from the conversation.
What sector of the economy has been most directly affected by unemployment in Anne Arundel?
A lot of them are coming from, of course, retail. Retail has slowed down some, manufacturing.
One of the things that we've noticed is that if you look at the unemployment rate, the unemployment rate is based on where you live, not necessarily where you were working.
We're noticing a lot of them are losing their jobs from businesses who were located outside of Anne Arundel County, mostly Baltimore, the southern part of Baltimore, things like that, the traditional manufacturing areas.
You might have had some IT jobs that have slowed down a little bit. A lot of them are from the financial services. We're seeing a large number of real estate agents who are coming in, some construction workers who are coming in. It's the typical areas that you've been hearing in the news that are slowing down: retail, manufacturing, construction and the finance sector.
So it's really blue collar as well as corporate-exec types these days?
I don't want to say corporate exec, but it is definitely a blue-collar and a white-collar recession, so it's hitting both.
What specifically is your office doing to address the unemployment situation? Are you launching any new efforts?
The main thing that we're doing is that we're really investing more money in helping people upgrade their skills so they can transition to a different field. If they were into manufacturing, maybe we get them into a more high-technical manufacturing where they need some type of training, some type of training-up skills.
But we're also looking outside the box and looking at different, creative ways to help people. Of course, one of the benefits that we do have here in Anne Arundel County is that we're so close to Washington and the federal government. That is one you launching any new efforts?
The main thing that we're doing is that we're really investing more money in helping people upgrade their skills so they can transition to a different field. If they were into manufacturing, maybe we get them into a more high-technical manufacturing where they need some type of training, some type of training-up skills.
But we're also looking outside the box and looking at different, creative ways to help people. Of course, one of the benefits that we do have here in Anne Arundel County is that we're so close to Washington and the federal government. That is one industry that is definitely growing. So we're looking at ways to help people transition into federal government jobs.
We just launched a new initiative where we're going to start doing workshops for people on how to apply to federal government jobs, how to locate them, what type of things you need to have on your resume, what type of skill sets you need to apply for federal government jobs. And that's going to be all over the place.
The people who were being laid off, a large number of those are coming out of the financial industry. So how do you take those skills sets and translate them to a federal job? For example, the president is talking about one of the ways that he wants to cut down on the deficit is to find people who are not paying their fair share of taxes. People are putting them in tax shelters, stuff like that.
So what does that mean? The IRS is going to be hiring more accountants, more people with financial backgrounds.
So we take someone who's lost their job in the real estate market, transition their skills, maybe give them some more skills so that they can go apply for those jobs. So those are the types of things that we are starting to do.
We're starting to reach more people. As you know, we operate six one-stop centers here in the county. But we're trying to take our show out on the road. We're working with the libraries and other community groups to go out and have access points where people can go into libraries and still receive the service to help find a job, the basic service of looking for a job, using the computers to find a job, fax machine to fax resumes, then we'll be doing some of our workshops in the libraries.
We're also working with community groups. Severna Methodist Church has a job club with several hundred members that get together every Monday. We go to talk to them, help them come up with new ways, they do a lot of networking among themselves.
What is the first step to take advantage of some of these services?
The first step to receive our services is coming into one of our one-stop centers. Like I said, we have six of them.
We have three full-service, one-stop centers. One's located in Glen Burnie, right on Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard, right across the street from Glen Burnie Town Centre. We're also located in Arundel Mills, right outside of Arundel Mills right next to entrance No. 2 Arundel Mills. And then we're located at 80 West St. in Annapolis, in downtown Annapolis.
We also have three satellite one-stop centers - one's located on Fort Meade. And that's really for people who are transitioning out of the military to help them find jobs. Of course you need ID to get on base.
We also have a counter within BWI, in Corridor C, right next to American Airlines. We co-locate there with BWI (Business) Partnership and Anne Arundel Community College.
And then we have another one-stop center that's in Freetown Village. Our senior program is run out of there, but that one-stop is open to the citizens of Freetown and surrounding (area) to come in to be able to use the services, to fax resumes, to get some help there.
So once you go into a one-stop, what is that step?
Basically what happens when someone comes in, we do a triage. We find out what that person's needs are.
If someone has a skill set to be able to go right back to work - they just lost their job due to no fault of their own and their skills are in date and they have the skills to go out and find a job and there's a job for them - then we just assist them. We let them assist themselves and we work with them to use our computer bank to find a similar job.
You are an accountant, you have all the latest skill sets and certifications, you just need to find an accounting job, we help you, you know, use our computers to locate a job like that.
Someone may be getting out of an industry where those skill sets are no longer in use or they need to increase their skills sets. Again, that accountant who might not know how to use QuickBooks, then we can put you into training on how to get QuickBooks that will get you that job. We are seeing a lot of that with our IT professionals.
You know, you have people who had 10, 20, 15 years of IT experience, but they don't have those new Microsoft certifications or Help Desk certifications. We can help get them those certifications.
And how many people has your organization actually helped within the past year?
From July 1 of 2008 to June 30 of 2009, we helped over 34,000 people.
And what is your expectation for this coming year?
We think it will start leveling out at some point, probably toward the second or third quarter of this year it will start leveling out. We're hoping that people will start getting back to work by then. We are looking somewhere in the high 30s, even maybe 40,000 people, especially with these new initiatives.
That number I gave you, that 34,000 people, those are people who came into our one-stop centers. So now that we're taking our show on the road and going out into the community, we're probably going to hit another 5 to 6,000 with the job clubs, with the access points, more outreach.
And so was that a record?
It's probably one of the highest numbers we've ever seen here in Anne Arundel County.
When you actually go to a one-stop shop and receive the services, how long does it typically take to actually find that job?
It depends. It depends on what services you are receiving. If, again, you're that person who has the marketable skill sets, you can receive a job right away. There's been people who have come in that our counselors have worked with them and they thought they needed to go into training, but they found a job right away so they didn't need to go into training.
It could take a week, two weeks, a couple months, with just looking and just interviewing. We're doing everything from short-term training that could be a six-week training course to a semester long. There's several people who we are putting in training that would be a year-long training.
Of the 34,000 people who registered at the one-stop centers for help, how many of those have actually gotten jobs?
About seventy percent of the people who come in for our services are placed in jobs.
And would you say that typically they are landing in their same industry?
No, not necessarily. Some people again are landing in their same industry. But most people, they are doing some type of transitional work.
Now with Fort Meade set to gain 22,000 jobs over the next six years, through BRAC, through new hires with NSA, private firms leasing space, what are your expectations for how BRAC will affect the unemployment rate here?
One, we're hoping that it will lower the unemployment rate. There's opportunity for us to do that.
When you're talking about DISA (the federal Defense Information Systems Agency), a lot of those jobs are coming up from Northern Virginia. But we're in a good opportunity to fill those vacancies. You have people who have skill sets who are out of work right now so we can get them into those jobs.
We are working very closely with DISA to understand the skill sets that people need so that when the jobs are here, the vacancies are here, we have the people who are trained.
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