(guitar music) - Hello and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll hear music from Wildly Appropriate, but first, joining us now is our guest Carey Fry.

Carey, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

- Of course, you are the Fargo Workforce Center Manager with Job Service in North Dakota.

So, as we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background first.

- Well, I've been with Job Service for over 21 years now.

Started my career there working with families receiving assistance through Cass County's Social Services, and spend a lot of my time working with employers and employees, matching them up in careers.

- All right, we're here today to talk about the job market and the economy, of course, in North Dakota a little bit.

So, let's just start off with, what is the state's job market like right now?

Unemployment and things like that.

- Well, the April numbers for unemployment were recently released.

Statewide in North Dakota, the unemployment rate is 2.5%.

Here locally in the FM area, it is 1.9%.

Bismarck 2.3, Grand Forks 2.1.

The labor force, which is anybody 16 years of age and older, that's the definition of the labor force.

Right now, in the Fargo, for example, area, we have 146,000, roughly, total people in the labor force.

143,000 of those are working, which only leaves a little over 2,500 people not working that are ages 16 and older.

They could be not working for a variety of reasons.

They could be not working because they're students and they're going to school.

They could be in high school, they could be in college and not holding a job.

They could be retired and not holding a job.

There's a variety of reasons.

What I'm saying here is everybody, just about everybody in North Dakota is working.

- Hmm, well, that's interesting, and I think we'll talk more about that maybe as we go throughout this.

Well, let's talk a little bit about, of course, you work in a Fargo office.

As the state's largest city, Fargo maybe has more jobs and more opportunities.

So, what can you tell us about the Fargo job market right now?

- Well, just like the job market for the state overall, I can talk about the FM area, or Region Five, the Southeast part of the State of North Dakota.

The largest number of openings that we have right now are in the healthcare and related fields.

After that, it's office and administration.

And after that, the next highest openings are production.

While we have all of those openings, we have very few resumes to fill those openings, or people to fill those openings.

So for example, we have almost 7,000 jobs posted for this area, and we only have 459 resumes posted on our site of people looking for work.

So that is almost 15 jobs for every resume, which is kind of startling, right?

And if you look at, for those people not engaged in the labor force, like I briefly spoke about before, a little over 2,500 folks, that's 2.5 jobs for each one of those people.

- And again, there's so many questions I wanna ask, but how does the job market vary, say from the Eastern part of the state to the Western part of the state?

- Well, the workforce shortage is touching the whole state, not just the Eastern part of the state.

One thing that is different from the east to the west is the sheer volume of jobs, okay?

So there's just so many more jobs here in the Eastern part of the state than say in the Western part of the state.

But when it comes to workforce shortage, there's less people out there too.

So there is the same amount percentage wise of need for workers there.

The volume in Fargo-Moorhead, is just so much greater.

One thing I can say about those jobs that are available, less than 1% of advertised jobs throughout the state are paying less than $10 an hour, and almost 35% of the jobs posted statewide are paying more than $30 an hour.

- Wow.

Okay.

Cass county, I understand, is considering creating a workforce board to attract and retain workers.

Can you comment on this?

And are there any other efforts, similar efforts across the state?

- Well, I think there's a lot of those efforts going on.

Here locally, the EDC, the Economic Development Association, and the chamber have been working really hard at solving the workforce problem or shortage that we have.

They're hopefully, and from what I understand, they are focusing on attracting workforce to North Dakota.

Because as I mentioned before, most everybody is already working.

It's not a matter of employers not accepting who we have here to work.

Employers are doing what they can to get people to come to work.

And they've pretty much exhausted the available labor force that's here.

So, if this new board is focused on attracting workers from out of state, I think that is great.

Job Service historically has done a lot of job fairs in our state with great turnout of employees and employers.

On average in Fargo here, we would have a job fair where we'd have almost 200 employers and anywhere from four to 600 applicants coming through the door pre-pandemic.

Well, now with this workforce shortage issue that's become so heightened since the pandemic, the number of applicants coming has dwindled some.

So we're still gonna continue to do those.

But for example, a week ago, we did a virtual job fair that was nationwide.

And we had really good turnout.

We had almost 400 applicants sign up for it.

Those applicants were from 20 different states across the nation, and we actually had multiple countries have applicants sign up for this.

And we had over 300 jobs that were posted on that virtual event, and 160 employers met with potential employees that day.

So if this new board is looking at attracting workforce from outside of the state, I think it's great.

The more help we can get in this business, the better.

- You mentioned COVID already.

Can you talk about the impact COVID has had on employers throughout the State, and which ones maybe were most adversely affected?

- Well, COVID definitely changed the face of workforce, right?

A lot of people started working from home.

A lot of those people didn't return from working from home, and employers became much more flexible about that than they ever were before.

Even if you are in the business of having to provide face to face contact with customers, even if I use Job Service as an example.

We do that, right?

We need to see our customers.

We need to see our clients and our employers.

But if somebody needs to work from home because of a sick child, or because they're not feeling well, or a hot water heater is being delivered, we now allow that flexibility.

I think one of the big things that's changed since COVID affecting employers and employees, is the greater amount of flexibility that employers have provided their employees and that employees are enjoying right now.

One area that's worth mentioning that happened because of COVID, was the huge impact it had on childcare availability.

Childcare has always been tight across the nation, not just in Fargo-Moorhead, or other cities in North Dakota.

And then with COVID and the need to shut down those daycares because of the spread of COVID, many of those daycares didn't reopen.

A lot of families had one parent stay home with children because they couldn't go to school or they couldn't go to daycare.

And those families have maybe decided that, "Hey, we've made it this far on one income, we're gonna continue to do that because childcare just isn't available to us right now."

- Hmm.

Well, and there you go, you hit on it.

I was gonna ask you about the impact COVID had on employees.

That was one, obviously.

Are there others you can talk about?

- I think that spending time at home, the people who lost their jobs, restaurants shutting down because of COVID, or other face to face businesses closing for a while, gave people the opportunity to reevaluate their employment goals or where they're at with employment.

And so, you've heard The Great Resignation, right?

We like to call it The Great Reshuffle, because most people have returned to work.

The issue is they may not have returned to work where they worked before.

So let's say they worked in the restaurant industry and they decided that, you know what?

This is not for me.

I want something different, and they've chosen a different field.

Or maybe they got some training during the COVID period, and they've upskilled in an area that they didn't work at before, and they've changed careers completely.

That's impacted employers greatly and employees.

- As we're talking before we came on camera here, I mentioned The Great Retirement.

You mentioned, I think, The Great Reshuffle, you called it, or whatever.

Because the question sometimes you get is why aren't people wanting to work anymore?

And what's sort of your answer to that?

- My answer to that is people are working.

It's not that people don't wanna work.

They're just being more selective about where they choose to work, and employees have more choices now.

And so they are working.

They're not sitting at home.

The unemployment rate is a good example of how they're not on unemployment.

They are working, they are engaged.

So having that choice has allowed them to move from one industry maybe to another industry.

And some of those industries have been harder hit than others.

The leisure, restaurant, hospitality industry being one that has been hit harder than others.

And then industries like, let's just say the financial industry, they've hardly taken a hit at all because of the pandemic and the changes in the workforce.

- You mentioned that food service industry still seems to be struggling to hire employees.

Some restaurants have closed, others have reduced hours.

Can you talk about maybe the nuances of this particular industry, and why is that these restaurants and places are having to make those decisions?

- Sure.

Well, during the pandemic, many restaurants closed and had to shift to maybe doing takeout only, things like that, which afforded them to have less staff on staff if they were doing takeout only, if they were able to keep their doors open at all.

And during that time, a lot of their workers decided not to come back or move on to something different.

If you look at pre-pandemic times, the restaurant industry doesn't have an easy time staffing to begin with.

First of all, most restaurants don't offer healthcare benefits or vacation or sick time.

And if a worker can get that someplace else, and they choose to do that, then that restaurant loses that employee.

So there's the benefit portion.

There is the hours.

A lot of hospitality and restaurant industry workers have to work long, late hours, seven days a week often, often on holidays, things like that.

And so there's the hours piece of it.

And then sometimes the environment in the restaurant industry or business isn't one that maybe is conducive to having your own time to be with your family or to study for school or things like that.

It can be a very demanding industry.

And interestingly, as I was reading more about the restaurant industry's struggles with retaining employees right now, one thing that popped up is the increasing amount of very difficult customers, and that people are choosing not to deal with that anymore.

- Okay.

Well, so do employees kind of hold the cards right now in the job market?

We've seen wages increase in these different sectors because, again, they gotta attract workers if you wanna stay in business.

So how do you see that?

- Well, wages have definitely gone up and, I can use for an example, back when there was the oil boom a decade or so ago, and the western part of the state was struggling to get people to work in towns like Williston.

And at the McDonald's, they had to pay $14 an hour, people were just shocked.

We were talking about it at the office.

It was like, "Oh my gosh, they're paying $14 an hour at the McDonald's in Williston.

How can that be?

Or at the Walmart there."

And now, you can't drive down the street and see a fast food place that's paying anything under $17 an hour.

You have signs up in front of Walmart, $18 an hour.

You see that the window manufacturing place is now paying $20 an hour offering flexible hours and benefits on day one, things like that.

It has really impacted wages and in the employees' eyes, that's a good thing.

- Good.

So you mentioned oil prices been up and down, up mostly lately.

What's the employment like out in Western North Dakota in the oil patch?

- Well, I was speaking to the Williston office manager before today's event, and they have about 1,600 job openings right now for about 288 resumes on their website.

So, just like here in the Fargo-Moorhead area, their experienced workforce shortage issue is out there.

The oil field, they're paying anywhere from 29 to $38 an hour on average out there for new employees.

They are starting to do more creative things to get employees.

They are offering sign-on bonuses.

They are offering higher per diem's than they've ever offered in the past to employees that aren't really captured in the wages.

So let's say they're making $30 an hour but they're also getting $170 per diem.

That helps pay the bills as well.

So employers are having to be more competitive with wages and more competitive with those fringe benefits that they they give their employees.

And interestingly enough, she also told me that we have to pay higher than other oil fields.

We have to pay higher than Texas is paying.

And employers are starting to realize that out west.

- Yeah.

You know, you're talking about, you work at the Workforce Center in Fargo area.

How many Workforce Centers are there in North Dakota?

- We have nine Workforce Centers across the State, in most of the major cities in North Dakota.

But even if you're in a more rural community, we do outreach to all of the counties in the State of North Dakota.

So, if you don't have a Job Service office in your small town, there's one close by, and we probably are in your small town anyway, visiting your town like at least twice a month.

- As we head into summer, what summer jobs are available for high school students and maybe college students too?

- Well, just like with everybody else, if you want a job right now, you can get a job, 'cause the job availability is huge.

And especially for those college students and high school students, because those medium-range wage jobs, those entry level jobs, those are the jobs that are hardest to fill.

And so if you're a high school student or a college student and you're looking to work this summer, you can work for park districts very easily.

I saw a Facebook post the other day that a small town close to Fargo was having trouble staffing their pool staff.

And if they didn't, the pool this summer wasn't gonna be opened.

So they were inviting anybody and everybody they knew to invite somebody else to apply for a job there.

So those are the type of jobs that high school kids and college kids can get, and they're available.

- Yeah.

So who do you work with on a daily and weekly basis, and what services in particular do you and your center, and I guess the others, provide?

- Well, we work with employers and potential employees.

So we provide a lot of training, whether someone needs to upskill or just get basic job skills or specific skills to get a job.

We have a program called WIOA, where we will fund training programs through M State or NDSCS to help somebody get skills, maybe to be a CDL driver, truck driver, or to be an LPN, something like that.

We help pay for that for that person so that they can get the skills that they need to get a job here in North Dakota.

We also help people with just finding a job, setting up a resume, job searching, interviewing skills, things like that.

We help employers post their listings on our website, jobsnd.com, and we help them search for workers and get workers and retain workers.

So those are a few of the things that we do.

- Very quickly, can you describe what it's like when you help someone find their dream job, or help 'em getting back on their feet?

- It's fabulous.

People who work at Job Service don't necessarily work there because it's such a glamorous job or high wage profession, but they work there because of the intrinsic value that they receive from helping people either find workers or help somebody find that job or that dream job.

It's a feeling that is priceless.

So it's a great feeling.

And I think that's part of the reason the people that I work with work there.

- Yeah.

So if people want more information, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- They can go to jobsnd.com on the web.

And on that website you will find all of our workforce center offices, their phone numbers will be on there and the office manager and staff that they can reach out to to inquire about possible training programs, to get upskilled, or how to find employees or how to find a job.

- Carey, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Stay tuned.

There's more to come.

(guitar music) - Wildly Appropriate is a band based in Bismark, North Dakota, who have described their music as groovy garage rock.

Their energy is unbridled and their original tunes come from personal experiences and emotion.

(guitar strumming) ♪ Dear sister, what you say ♪ ♪ Tell me now sister, is it really that bad ♪ ♪ Still together and not say no ♪ ♪ Causing pain won't heal your own ♪ ♪ Dear sister, why so mad ♪ ♪ Love where it hurts, not set fire to it ♪ ♪ Don't put yourself on that homemade island ♪ ♪ So no captivate that which we learn ♪ ♪ Dear sister, please don't fear ♪ ♪ For it's only passing by ♪ ♪ Dear sister, we all must go through it ♪ ♪ Waiting in love, on the other side ♪ (instruments play) ♪ Oh dear sister, dear sister ♪ ♪ Oh dear sister, dear sister ♪ ♪ Oh dear sister, dear sister ♪ ♪ Oh dear sister, dear sister ♪ (instrumental music ends) (upbeat guitar music) ♪ Well, last night I got so drunk I couldn't breathe ♪ ♪ June Bug greets you in the morning ♪ ♪ Sounds rolling over hills of prairie ♪ ♪ Lights flashin' ♪ ♪ Cool dancin', yeah ♪ ♪ But I didn't see a thing ♪ ♪ I was staring at a single light intensively ♪ ♪ Fractured system failing ♪ ♪ Well, last night I felt so low but so inspired ♪ ♪ That creativity ♪ ♪ Was chained up by this tired feeling ♪ ♪ With the sounds rolling over hills of prairie ♪ ♪ Lights flashin' ♪ ♪ Cool dancin', yeah ♪ ♪ But I didn't see a thing ♪ ♪ Or an empty ambulance lights on wailing ♪ ♪ Fractured system failing ♪ (guitar solo) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Post this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(groovy music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.