The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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August 27, 2010

Area jobless rates generally edge up

Le Sueur County has highest unemployment rate in region

By Tim Krohn Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — Unemployment rates were up slightly in six of the nine area counties from June to July.

Unemployment in Blue Earth County rose to 6.2 percent from 6.0 in June. Nicollet County’s rate of 5.8 percent was up from 5.7 percent the month before.

Rates also rose in Faribault, Martin, Waseca and Watonwan.

“We haven’t seen the increase (in jobs) we’d hoped for, but we’re still optimistic,” said Joni McCluhan, who operates Express Personnel Services in North Mankato.

“There’s not a lot out there. It was a slump in the early summer, but it’s picking up a bit,” she said.

Area employers who are hiring are often doing so to fill critical openings or to begin building back from staff reductions made last year.

Chad Surprenant, president of I&S Engineers & Architects in Mankato, said they’ve hired five people this year, equaling 8 percent of their workforce. “It’s a positive sign, we’re building back up.”

While the construction sector remains slow, Surprenant said I&S has a “decent backlog” now.

“But you used to never worry about what would come after the backlog, because there was always more. Now it’s a heightened amount of anxiety about it.”

One good thing for employers who are looking to fill jobs is that there is no shortage of good applicants.

“It’s just crazy,” Surprenant said of the number of applicants for jobs — 10 to 50 per job, depending on the qualifications needed.

“There is a lot of great quality people out there (applying),” he said.

Jane Goettl, human resources manager at Volk Transfer and Logistics in Mankato, said they didn’t lay off anyone through the recession and have been in a growth mode in its freight-hauling business.

That hasn’t come because of an improved economy, but because the company has been more aggressive in finding new business.

“We have added new positions in inside sales and outside sales, so we have an active sales force out seeking the freight for us, which we didn’t do before,” Goettl said.

She said the company has drivers for all the semi tractors it owns and is hiring more drivers to operate rented tractors.

“We’re putting people in place so that when the economy does recover, we’ll have everything ready.”

Goettl said employee turnover has slowed considerably this year.

“Last year was the toughest year. Drivers weren’t getting the hours they were accustomed to. We had 74 percent turnover last year. This year that is down to about 23 percent.”

Le Sueur County continues to have the highest unemployment rate in the region — 8.4 percent — although that was down from 8.7 percent in June.

All of the county rates were lower than they were in July 2009.

The Mankato-North Mankato Metropolitan Statistical Area (all of Blue Earth and Nicollet counties) had an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent in July, up from 5.9 percent in June.

The total number of non-farm jobs in the two counties dipped by 862 to 54,296 in July.

The only encouraging news in the local jobs numbers is that total job numbers in the past five months have been generally slightly ahead of the same months a year ago. 

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