Hottest Employer of the Week for April 30th, 2007

This weeks Hottest Employer of the Week is the George Delallo Distribution Center in Greensburg, PA. They are seeking an experienced dispatcher and multiple over the road (OTR) Class A drivers. The driver positions are for local deliveries where the driver will be able to be at home daily. For more details on qualifications and how to apply pick up this weeks Employment Guide.

Friday Musings on the Pittsburgh Job Front

The beers that saved Pittsburgh? Not quite, but the news of Pittsburgh Brewing finally working out a deal with the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is welcome as it has saved about 250 well paying jobs in the city. This in conjunction with a previous announcement of a contract signed between the former Latrobe Brewing (now City Brewing Co. of La Crosse, WI.) and Samuel Adams to begin brewing beer will help preserve an additional 100 to 150 jobs in southwest PA.

For the second time in 22 years, Pittsburgh has been cited as the Most Livable City in America by the Places Rates Almanac. While not finishing in the top 20 of any single category, the city was consistently high enough in all categories to come away with the award, last won in 1985. Our strengths include cost of living, recreation and education. Although jobs are a category, we did not rank low enough to hurt our number one ranking.

Joe Grata of the Post Gazette did a good job with an article on the problems of finishing the Mon-Fayette Expressway. Already half built (or under construction) another 3.6 billion dollars will be needed to complete the project. Estimates are that a minimum of 10 years will elapse before the possibility of finishing due to lack of funding. This will come as welcome news to thousands of area residents who would be impacted by having a major highway divide their neighborhoods (and their houses) but to the region as a whole it is an embarrassment that will mean much slower economic growth for not only the Mon Valley area but all of Southwest PA.

Friday Musings on the Pittsburgh Jobs Front

Hourly employment prospects in the Pittsburgh area over the next 3 years have improved dramatically over what we have experienced since 9-11. The list of all the recent announcements that will influence this is long: Westinghouse will move 3,000 employees from Monroeville to Cranberry Twp, then ADD another 1,000 employees, Simon Malls is nearing final approvals on a new Waterfront style mall in Cranberry that will employ over 1,000 people. Another local developer, Don Rogers, who has many successful retail projects already under his belt, has plans for an additional 800,000 square foot office complex around the new Simon Mall property projected to bring yet another 1,000 jobs, the new casino in Pittsburgh will create a projected 1,000 permanent jobs while the casino near the Meadowlands in Washington County will add another 300-400, The new pens arena will not only add many additional construction jobs over the next 2 years but will net out additional hourly positions once completed. On smaller scales but still significant Bayer will hold a grand opening today on a new call center that will add 60 jobs, a German company, Sycor, will add 80 jobs with the move of it’s headquarters to Pittsburgh, Medrad has recently projected the addition of another 100 jobs. The Post Gazette’s Bill Toland wrote a nice article on the impact all the new construction will have on the area over the next 2-3 years.

Yes, there have been a couple of set back, most notably Sony eliminated up to 900 positions over the next year, but these will be more than made up with jobs added elsewhere in the metro. Hopefully some of the lost Sony jobs can be made up by new tenants in the space being freed up by Sony, but only time will tell.

Manpower released a survey this past week on the hardest to fill jobs nationally. It is noted that the positions have decidedly trended toward blue collar. Click this link to read more.

The Pen’s New Arena and the Jobs It Means

We have intentionally avoided the topic of our Pittsburgh Penguins search for a new home because, frankly, no jobs angle could be developed until the details of a deal became public. Now that it has, the discussion can begin on just what this will mean for southwest Pennsylvania from a quality of life standpoint (of which employment has a majority stake). Locking the Pens up for 30 years will not only maintain hundreds of direct and thousands of indirectly dependent jobs in the area, its value to our collective psyche is beyond quantification. Most of us know we live in a metro area that has bled a large percentage of our youth to other cities due to the lack of opportunity both real and perceived. Losing the Pens, who’s core audience is the youngest of all professional sports, would have contributed to the perception that our ‘Burgh continues to die a slow death. Having reached the deal to keep them is the single biggest impact, each of the 3 government officials involved, will have on our lives during their careers. Governor Ed Rendell, County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl each deserve high praise on a job well done. The point to all this is the impact for this deal will not only keep and grow hourly jobs in Pittsburgh directly, it will greatly enhance the ability of corporations to recruit professional candidates from outside our area as well as retain those already here, which will indirectly increase the needed hourly support jobs (restaurant, hospitality, healthcare, retail and banking just to name few). The prospect of future hourly employment in the Pittsburgh region, already good, just became better!

Pittsburgh Area Jobs Up More Than 11,000 From a Year Ago!

It seems our post from Friday is already beginning to look prescient! The Post Gazette this morning reported the Pittsburgh area unemployment rate in January dropped 1/10th of a point to 4.6%, one tenth below the state rate. The big news here was the seperate business payrolls survey which showed more than 11,000 new jobs have been created in the Pittsburgh Metro area (7 county) since January 2006, the largest increase since 2001. If you are a job seeker in the Pittsburgh area it is finally starting to become a seller's market after 6 long years of stagnation. For recruiters in our area this means it is becoming more difficult to fill positions. Turnover, especially in lower paying positions, could increase dramatically over the next year.

Pittsburgh Job Information and Resources for Job Seekers and Recruiters!

Welcome to our blog! A great first 4 words that have started many such endeavors! The blog will be dedicated to both Job Seekers of Southwestern PA and Recruiters. We are developing some fantastic partnerships in the area, such as with The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh and a couple of others that should be announced in the next month or so. Stay tuned. We hope to post information about resources available to help with the job seeking and recruiting process, general information about employment conditions in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas - concentrating especially in the hourly, blue collar non-exempt arena. We see so much in the news about high tech jobs in the Pittsburgh area, which is certainly fantastic (!) but it seems the hourly area has been practically ignored.

BTW, don't miss the big Job Fair coming up on March 28th, 2007 at the US steel building in downtown Pittsburgh. We'll have about 30-35 companies and many other resources for job seekers from the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh, Commute Info and more. Pick up a copy of this weeks Employment Guide for more information.

Thanks For Reading!
Pete Denio

http://pittsburgh.employmentguide.com