Hunting Grounds More Fertile as Companies Look to Expand
It’s getting easier to get a job.
That upbeat outlook emerges from a batch of new reports from the federal government and major employment services firms.
Even in Southern California, where the economic recovery has lagged the nation’s business expansion, employment specialists say job hunters’ prospects are improving. Outside of the still-depressed aerospace industry, “many companies are looking to grow,” said Marc Goldman, director of marketing for Glendale-based AppleOne Employment Services.
Database management specialist John Clark of Hermosa Beach is a case in point. When he was laid off in 1990, it took Clark seven months to land a new position. It was an uphill battle just to get a job interview.
But when Clark was laid off again early this summer from Hughes Aircraft, he shot off letters to about 10 firms--and all but one or two invited him to come for interviews. “I was really surprised at the response I was getting,” said Clark, 29.
After a month of unemployment, he landed a job as a researcher in the purchasing department of a Los Angeles software distribution company. If Clark successfully completes his three-month probation, he anticipates a pay raise to $35,000 a year, matching the salary of his last job.
Here are highlights from several reports that document the improved job market nationwide:
* Managers and executives assisted by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found new jobs in an average of 2.7 months during the second quarter of 1996. That was the shortest average search since the big outplacement firm started tracking the statistic in 1980. “It attests to the strength of the economy,” said John A. Challenger, the firm’s executive vice president.
* A Labor Department study of 8.4 million workers whose jobs were eliminated from 1993 to 1995 found that 71% were reemployed as of last February. A similar survey conducted two years earlier found that 67% of displaced workers were reemployed.
One downbeat note: More than half the reemployed full-time workers took pay cuts with their new jobs, and about a third suffered earnings losses of 20% or more.
* In its latest survey of 16,000 U.S. employers, the giant employment services firm Manpower Inc. found that 25% plan to increase their staffs during the last three months of this year, whereas 9% anticipate cutbacks. The figures reflect a slight improvement from the economically robust fourth quarter of 1995.
Overhaul for Overtime
A new effort is underway to overhaul California’s daily overtime rules, which have been both praised as a crucial protection for employees and criticized as an obstacle preventing flexible work scheduling.
The rules require most of the state’s hourly employees to be paid overtime when they put in more than eight hours in a single day, even if they do not work more than 40 hours during the week. Federal standards are less stringent, requiring overtime only if more than 40 hours are worked in a week.
Although a legislative proposal to strike down the state’s daily overtime rules died in the Senate this year, the issue has been revived by the California Industrial Welfare Commission, which also has authority over workplace pay standards.
Hearings to consider changes begin on Thursday and, following a lengthy review process, the IWC is expected to act during the first half of 1997.
The Republican-dominated IWC is considered likely to provide business much of the leeway it seeks. The industries whose overtime regulations are under IWC scrutiny include some of the state’s largest employers. They are manufacturing, retailing, restaurants and hotels, along with the broad occupational category covering professional, technical, clerical and mechanical workers.
Employer groups say their workers, too, want flexible schedules but that existing regulations make it prohibitively expensive.
Under the current system, many workers “are frustrated they can’t coach Little League,” said Robyn Black, chair of the IWC. “If I believed [the push for change] was primarily employer-driven, we probably wouldn’t be looking at it.”
But organized labor, which says its efforts at compromise have been rebuffed, promises to fight any wholesale changes.
Tom Rankin, second in command at the California Labor Federation, said existing rules are particularly important to part-time employees, who often work for low wages and receive no benefits. Employers “are trying to take money out of employees’ pockets and put it in their own pockets,” he said.
Without the protections, Rankin said, part-timers can show up at work and be told, “You have to work 12 hours today, and we don’t have to pay you overtime.”
Already, daily overtime rules have been waived or loosened in such industries as health care and agriculture--where 60-hour weeks are permissible without overtime pay. Also, unions are free to negotiate alternate schedules, such as those providing workweeks of four 10-hour days.
Times staff writer Stuart Silverstein can be reached at (213) 237-7887 or by e-mail at stuart.silverstein@latimes.com
