- April 24, 2024
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Workers between ages 25 and 54 are unemployed at 6.4%; 55 and older at 14.3%.
Loren McGinley’s clientele comprise some of Flagler County’s most emotional residents. Many cry in her office, others scream. All are looking for work. Every one, she says, just wants to start life again.
The manager at the One-Stop Employment Center at the Center for Business Excellence, McGinley deals with unemployment daily. The state sends her organization weekly lists of names of residents who recently filed for unemployment; she attempts to match those people with possible employers, as well as offer them interview, resume-writing and technical training. The center will even do applicants’ taxes for free and purchase work clothes for needy new hires.
“We’re a stepping stone,” she said. Although most of the jobs to which the CBE connects its clients are entry-level, for Flagler’s 14.5% unemployed, McGinley believes they’re a good place to start.
According to labor market statistics released by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, 11.4% of Flagler’s population ages 16 through 24 are unemployed; 6.4% are unemployed between the ages of 25 to 54; and 14.3% are unemployed at 55 years of age and older.
Retirees have an impact on employment numbers, McGinley said. These are people on Social Security who normally would not be considered workforce members but have re-entered after the market and housing crashes to supplement their incomes and refortify their nest eggs.
A majority of people McGinley assists are between 40 and 52 years old, however, and tell her they lost their jobs to younger workers with smaller salary demands.
It’s a culture of displacement, she said. “Right now a lot of people are at the point where they’ll take anything.” That’s why, she said, the new Red Lobster/Olive Garden on State Road 100 had applicants wrapped twice around the building when hiring began in February. Young people are replacing older employees for less money; specialists are earning minimum wage in retail and food industry positions; college grads are moving back home with their parents; and many entrepreneurs, like Janine Chichersky (see Page 14 for her story), are starting over in new fields.
McGinley sees a lot of discouragement. The unemployed feel like they “are lost in a circle of nothingness,” she said.
With one-third of the city’s 75,000 residents in the workforce, Palm Coast Senior Planner Beau Falgout believes small changes to the market can make major differences.
He said, “14.5% is a shocking number, but you get one big employer and everything can change.” A company like Palm Coast Data, he said, can bring 1,000 new jobs to the city, which equates to roughly 2.5 points on the unemployment scale.
Falgout said the 14.5% reflects those who participated in automated phone surveys.
Between 2006 and 2009, he said, the city lost 11,000 jobs while adding 2,400 members to the workforce. According to Federal Bureau of Labor statistics, most of the jobs lost were in the construction and manufacturing fields — approximately 1,400 and 700, respectively. Nearly 80% of the manufacturing loss, Falgout said, resulted from Sea Ray’s downsizing.
Jobs in the education, health services, retail, information and wholesale trade sectors recorded moderate to negligible growth.
All of it — construction, jobs, population — “it’s all melded together,” McGinley said. And, to her, the outlook isn’t bright.
“We help everybody and anybody who comes to the door the best that we possibly can. But it gets very difficult … We’re trying, you know? … We don’t want (people) to be helpless.”
