Despite the economic gloom, there are bright spots out there where companies are hiring, and John Hanigan found one of them.
Those bright spots for jobs include health care, education, coal mining, energy-related manufacturing, and wholesale and retail trade in Western Pennsylvania, say local employers, staffing firms and career experts.
In fact, 27 percent of employers responding to Manpower Inc.'s employment outlook survey for Western Pennsylvania said they intended to hire in the last three months of the year, said Kelly M. Scott, regional director for Manpower in Robinson. Only 10 percent said they expected to cut jobs.
Hanigan was looking to change companies this summer, before he landed at Elliott Co. in Jeannette in August. Elliott makes industrial turbines for the oil, natural gas and chemical industries, a field Hanigan has worked in for nearly 30 years.
"I was making a career change and was looking for more of a team environment. Elliott Co. has a lot to offer -- the wages and benefits and work environment. There's a good quality of life in the area," said Hanigan, who was hired as director of operations.
Elliott is bucking an economic trend. Rather than laying off workers, the company has added about 225 jobs -- including manufacturing and engineering positions -- in its U.S. facilities as well as worldwide operations since last year, said spokesman Brian Lapp.
Other sectors that are hiring locally include information technology and health care workers dealing directly with patient care, said Larry Puhalla, a supervisor at the PA CareerLink office in Forest Hills.
"We're seeing a lot of 'helpdesk jobs,'" Puhalla said, referring to jobs requiring an information technology specialist to resolve problems with computers and software. "That hasn't really dropped."
The health care sector remains a strong jobs generator, despite the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center laying off 500 employees last month. Those employees whose jobs were eliminated were not involved in direct patient care, Puhalla said.
UPMC still is increasing its work force by hiring more people than it fired this year, adding 6,187 this year, compared to 5,680 in 2007, said UPMC spokesman Frank Raczkiewicz.
At PA CareerLink in Youngwood, 156 of 254 current job openings are connected with manufacturing, warehousing, assembling, transportation, construction and clerical, said administrator Anthony Gebicki.
"We're still in there with manufacturing," Gebicki said, including the coal and natural gas industries.
Consol Energy Inc. in Cecil, Washington County, which operates 20 coal mines, hired 1,000 employees in both 2007 and 2008, and it expects to continue that trend for the next few years, spokesman Thomas Hoffman said. The bulk of those new employees -- coal miners and engineers -- will work for Consol's operations in Southwest Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, he said.
Most of the hiring is being done to replace employees who are retiring, Hoffman said. The average age of Consol employees is in the early 50s, and many likely will retire in the next four to five years, he said.
Any job associated with manufacturing, mail houses and packing of merchandise for wholesale and retail trade during the holiday shopping season is also doing well, Manpower's Scott said.
While the nation lost 1.2 million jobs in the first 10 months of the year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm jobs in the seven-county Pittsburgh region increased by 28 percent in the first nine months of the year, the state figures show.
"We don't grow as fast (as other regions), but when it (economy) goes sour, it doesn't go as quickly as the rest of the country," said Frank Gamrat, senior research associate for the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a think tank in Castle Shannon.
While no sector is immune to recession, health care and education are among the Pittsburgh region's stronger sectors, Gamrat said.
"They will be more stable than the financial sector," even though PNC Financial Services Group, Bank of New York Mellon and Dollar Bank are not in the same dire straits as other banks, Gamrat said. BNY Mellon, however, recently announced it would cut 1,800 employees nationwide.
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