By Shannon Holmes
September 13, 2004

On September 1, The Employment Source in Canton (OH) co'sponsored a job fair and career expo at the Canton Civic Center in hopes of trying to connect people back to employment in the Stark County area. The turn out was larger than expected, with over 1,000 job seekers and about 50 employers, offering positions with career advancement opportunities, not just jobs.

"It's about double what I had anticipated," said Sharon E. Parry, Executive Director of the Employment Source. "Ninety percent of the people there were from Stark County, but we also drew people from Ashland and Carroll and Tuscarawas."

The turnout, she said, is surely a sign of the tumultuous economic times in Northeast Ohio. In the last few years, major employers, such as Hoover Co., have laid off employees. Others, such as The Timken Company, the largest steel and white-collar office employer in Stark County, have threatened to do the same. And still others, such as Danner Press and Bocko Inc., have closed their doors altogether.

"For the last 2 years, I've been trying to find a job without any success," said Robert Beggs.

"Most of the people there (at the job fair) have been looking for work," Parry said. "They're optimistic because they see 40 to 50 employers there, but they don't want to get their hopes up."

Ohioans continue to worry about the job market. Despite the national unemployment rate decreasing to 5.6 percent and having nearly 100,000 jobs added to the labor market in August, Canton for the last five years has been an excess labor market. In July, the most recent local figures, unemployment in Canton was 9.4 percent, down from 10.1 percent in June, and Stark County was 6.0 percent, down from 6.4 percent in June.

Some of the companies looking to hire individuals out of the 1,000 plus attending the job fair and career expo included Alliance Castings, Carlisle Industries, Detroit Diesel, Heinz Foods, Lauren Manufacturing, Mercy Medical Center Hospital, Ohio State Highway Patrol, Seifert Technologies, The Timken Company, Western Southern Financial Group, and Wheeling and Erie Railway.

Joseph C. Burley of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway Company said he was surprised at how many qualified people handed him resumes.

"There are a lot of people with a lot of work experience looking for positions," he said. "Usually, around this time of year, you see a lot of people right out of high school."

Outside of the job fair and career expo, over the past year The Employment Source has been able to successful placed ninety percent of dislocated workers and adults served through their One'stop Centers. Of those place over ninety percent have retained their jobs. Over the past eight months alone, The Employment Source assisted Alliance Casting, a new company to the Canton area, to hire 400 steel workers.