By MATTHEW FRENCH
Staff Writer

South Carolina received another piece of jolting news late last month when the monthly unemployment figures were released. The state had slipped to 4th highest unemployment rate in the country at 7%, leading only Alaska, Michigan and Mississippi.

Charleston is faring slightly better, but saw its unemployment rate jump from a four-month-long 4.6% to 6.1% in January, according to the state Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That represents thousands of people out of work. The current state unemployment rate is perceived as being so dreary it prompted Gov. Mark Sanford to call the news “a clear and present economic danger.”

Unemployed or unemployable?

“The problem that we’re seeing is that many of the long-term unemployed in this area are unemployable; they just don’t pass the test,” says Dottie Karst, owner of Charles Foster Staffing Co., a staffing firm in Charleston. “In this market, where there is a labor shortage, if a person is unemployed, it’s because they don’t have the skills necessary to get a job and they’re unwilling to get (the skills).”

Karst says the Charleston region is something of a contained employment pool. Many people in the region move between jobs in the area, but comparably few leave. Because of that, there are some skilled and qualified people who move to this area and become what she calls under-employed.

“The fact is many people choose to stay here and stay underemployed. The quality of life in Charleston is undoubtedly high,” she says. “I think we have a good workforce here, but I also think a large percentage of that comes from outside the region. We have a great education problem, because we’re not producing people who are ready to do the work that needs to be done.”

Karst says the work ethic and ability of some unemployed people are abysmally low, but middle-level and executive-level candidates can still find positions, provided they’re willing to work a bit more or make a bit less money.

“The calls I’m getting now are about a lot more mid-level employees for professional services: i.e. accountants, engineers, general management,” she says. “What I’m finding, however, is that these companies want to hire for mid-level positions but they want upper-level skills. I think it’s largely due to a recession mentality, where companies think they can get a little more for a little less.”

Companies, she says, are looking for analytical skills normally present in upper and executive-level employees, because companies know that there aren’t typically a lot of executive-level jobs in this area, meaning they can have their pick of the best candidates.

“You have to look at the market, and you’ll see that there aren’t a whole lot of executive-level positions here, so you have a lot of executive level people working mid-level jobs, just to work here,” she says.

Jan Cappellini, vice president of operations at Alternative Staffing Inc., a staffing and temporary agency in Charleston that focuses on the manufacturing space, says a good portion of the unemployed workforce with which she works is similarly unemployable.

“There are a lot of people out there who don’t have the work ethic to come to work five days or the skills needed to work at all,” Cappellini says. “And the simple and sad fact is we have some people who simply don’t want to work. But the unfilled jobs for skilled and semi-skilled workers—welders, mechanics, commercially licensed drivers, carpenters—are in tremendously high demand.”

Cappellini says the shelf life on a highly qualified candidate is about one week before somebody comes along and scoops the person up.

However, some people from the Midwest and New England who move to this area do so with unrealistic wage expectations, which can and does add to the unemployment problem.

“But the real problem we have is with simple skills,” she says. “Companies are looking for people with a work ethic, people who present themselves well in an interview, people with basic reading and writing skills, people who can use basic hand tools. And we’re finding too many who don’t meet that minimum level.”

Unfilled positions

Karst says most of the unfilled positions she deals with are administrative posts. Companies look diligently to interview candidates for one or two positions and, if the position is good, they can take their pick of employees. However, secretarial, administrative and some legal jobs are disappearing because of technology. Automatic call answering and call centers are driving some people out of work, she says.

Cappellini says many of the jobs in the manufacturing sector that go unfilled call for a higher level of technical knowledge.

“Some pretty basic skills, like maintenance or mechanics, can really get you far in this market right now,” she says. “Skilled workers get picked up and paid well, and that’s because there are so many unfilled positions for welders, mechanics and the like.”

Karst says technical knowledge, while no longer trendy and new, has become a staple requirement for most office jobs. Employers aren’t going to require that candidates can program in HTML or C++, but they will require that somebody has a basic knowledge of word processing, Internet research and e-mail.

“The problem with Charleston is we’ve had to import a lot of the (jobs) market, because those positions often aren’t grown here,” she says. “Add to that that the cost of living is still outpacing the rise in salaries, and Charleston will soon be at a crossroads.”

Education, education, education

Both Karst and Cappellini agree that public education in South Carolina is failing employers, both blue and white collar.

 Al Parish, director of the Center for Economic Forecasting at Charles­ton Southern University, agrees, calling the state’s poor showing in education the single biggest problem for companies looking to relocate or set up shop.

“The big drawback to this area is education. I think that’s the one thing that keeps companies from looking at us,” says Parish.

“It’s not about taxes, but indirectly about the workforce. We can’t keep raising taxes to pay for a failing school system. But if a company comes in and offers higher-paying jobs, then the tax rates automatically go up, property values and wages go up, and the funding to public schools also goes up.”

Capellini says not only is public education not preparing students for the workforce, but valuable resources are being used to try and get students interested in higher education, even if that path is unrealistic.

“We need to start steering some of our children in high school toward these (manufacturing and skilled) positions,” she says. “We need to show students that these positions can pay very well. We don’t have enough of those people in our local workforce as it is and, without doing that, I think we’re going to continue to suffer a real shortage.”

Matthew French is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at mfrench@crbj.com.

SUBSCRIBE | REPRINTS | CONTACT US

Phone: 843-849-3100    Fax: 843-849-3122