Entry-level jobs dry up, even for execs
Once-worker-hungry sectors see waves of applicants -- many of them overqualified 
By: Jill Lerner
Boston Business Journal

After Dan Rossi was laid off from an executive post in the beverage industry in the spring of 2000, he took a major pay cut to land first one retail job, and then another.

Despite 30 years of industry experience, Rossi, 54, who now manages the retail cutlery store Stoddard's at Copley Place, said he found it "almost impossible" to get a job in his career industry, and like many other displaced former executives, sought refuge in the lower-paying retail world.

Today, however, even those jobs are harder to come by.

Rossi says he receives an average of 12 applicants per job listing -- many from displaced high-tech workers -- whenever Stoddard's is hiring. Currently, it's not.

With professional and executive-level hiring showing little meaningful recovery, many displaced workers are trying to make the switch to historically plentiful lower-paying, lower-skilled positions.

But those jobs aren't as plentiful as they used to be, and thanks to downward pressure in the economy and a glut of applicants, suddenly-choosy employers in the services and retail sectors are making the prospects for a downward career switch more difficult. The result for many employers has been a reduction in turnover as workers choose to stay rather than test the job market.

In the first quarter of 2003, unemployed workers took an average of 4.1 months to find a job, the longest since 1984, according to a report by Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. In May, the number of people nationwide who had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer rose more than 20 percent to 1.9 million, up by 347,000 people compared with a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

A third-quarter employment survey by Manpower in mid-June showed the weakest job outlook in 12 years. And employers in such traditionally labor-starved industries as services and retail estimate their third-quarter hiring activity will be the softest it has been in more than a decade.

All that has meant a glut of applicants -- fundamentally altering the supply-and-demand link between employers of lower-paying jobs and the labor pool -- and has allowed hiring managers to be more choosy.

"Overall applications are up, but not necessarily (for) what we're looking for," said Marlo Michaels, regional training manager for Richmond Heights, Mo.-based Panera Bread Co., a sandwich and bakery chain. "We have a lot of people applying without restaurant experience."

Michaels said the overall increase in applicants has allowed Panera to hire the older, more mature workers, ones "impossible" to find only two years ago. Nonetheless, the company is hiring mainly for management jobs that require food-service experience, rather than for cashiers, sandwich makers and other entry-level positions.

"There are all sorts of benefits to an economy like this for an employer," said Mark Spengler, Boston-area manager for Milwaukee staffing company Manpower Inc.

Boston-based Palladion Services Inc., a company that provides security guard and concierge services to office and residential buildings in Greater Boston, is a beneficiary of the glut of displaced professionals, said its president, Richard Primrose.

"Overall, we've had an increase in the number of applicants and the quality of our applicant pool," he said, estimating that applications for his security guard and apartment building concierge jobs has increased 25 percent, partly from former hospitality industry executives.

But the company, too, is selective in its hiring, Primrose said, and thanks to rampant layoffs in the economy, it is targeting laid-off professionals.

One former career employee whom Palladion netted in March 2002 was Suzanne Curtin, a former senior government clerk who took a security guard job at Palladion when her state office was downsized and she was offered early retirement. Curtin, 61, holds a master's degree in social work from the University of Chicago.

"I didn't have to go the complicated résumé route," said Curtin, who added she preferred the idea of working as a security guard to a potentially stressful social work position. She also feared a lengthy search for a professional job, she said.

A widely held but misguided belief is the perception that anyone can get a lower-paying retail or service job, say experts.

Michael Dreese, co-owner and CEO of pop-culture retailer Newbury Comics Inc., said he's seen an "overwhelming" increase in job applications in the past three years.

But at the same time, company sales are down, and as a consequence Newbury has eliminated 20 full-time equivalent positions in the past year.

Retail and service companies, although they've held up better than others, are by and large not adding staff, noted Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

The upshot for employers is that the scarcity of entry-level and low-skilled positions has slowed employee turnover, resulting in much less "bouncing around" among retail employees compared with three years ago.

Palladion's Primrose said that in an industry known for high turnover, nearly 60 percent of his 380 security guard and concierge employees have been with the company two years or more. And Newbury's Dreese said maybe two store managers out of 27 have left in the past year.

"The turnover factor is what's crazy, because people just won't leave," said Dreese. "It's like that great line, 'How can I miss you when you won't go away?' "