PORT ANGELES – Local employment experts say there are at least 2200 job openings right now in Clallam County.
WorkSource Washington Area Coordinator Michael Robinson says those are just the openings listed through Washington’s Employment Security. He estimates that’s only 75 percent of all the job openings now in Clallam County.
Robinson spoke at a meeting organized by the Clallam County Economic Development Corporation Wednesday. He says, as of earlier this spring, there are 2000 people that could be in the labor force but aren’t.
“We’ve got this pool of 2,000 folks between basically Sequim to Forks that are in that pool of able-to-work and how do we get them to move in back to the labor force? I know there’s a lot of opinions on what, you know, the current unemployment and the federal unemployment.. But there’s also there are some other factors that are contributing to that.”
Robinson says they’re exploring ways to get more people applying and taking jobs. Some of the issue is the continued extra unemployment dollars keeping people at home.
However, local WorkSource supervisor Brandino Gibson says there are other issues that may be keeping people collecting unemployment.
“Schools are not fully open, so we have parents that are going: ‘I would love to go to work. I have to stay home with my kid. They’re only going to school, two days a week or I’m still not comfortable letting my kid go back to school yet’. Then, some of the jobs that we have, you know, what’s the qualification level of some of the positions that we have that can fill some of these positions.”
Gibson says about 1000 people have come off unemployment in Clallam County since the start of the year, although the unemployment levels are still higher than before the pandemic hit.