Unemployed to Corbett: Where are the jobs?

HARRISBURG - Since West Philadelphia resident David Pride lost his job selling cable service 18 months ago, he hasn't exactly been loafing.

He has attended job fairs and enrolled at Philadelphia Community College school, where he received an associate's degree as a paralegal. And he's fighting City Hall to get blighted buildings removed from his neighborhood.

"I'm not sitting at home collecting checks," said Pride, whose unemployment insurance just ran out last week.

Ditto Larry McGee of Bucks County, who said he has sent out 150 resumes since being laid off from a plumbing supply company in May 2009. And Janet Hillier of Warminster, who until January was working on a contract basis.

Which is why comments by Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett last week about jobs going unfilled and the jobless preferring the government dole over work really stung - so much so that Pride called Corbett on Monday to ask one question:

Just where are those jobs?

At a campaign stop Friday in Lancaster County, Corbett said that employers had told him they have jobs but can't find workers.

"People don't want to come back to work while they still have unemployment," he said. "They're literally telling him, 'I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out.' That's becoming a problem."

Corbett's comments set off a firestorm of debate. Democrat opponent Dan Onorato called a Capitol news conference Monday to lambast Corbett for insulting the hard-working people of Pennsylvania. The Democratic National Committee spun the incident into a broad attack on the failed policies of the Bush era that they said sent the country into a recession.

Pride, who started his career as a laboratory technician at Johnson and Johnson, has tried to adapt to the changing job market, working for AT&T during the tech boom in the 1980s and later selling insurance and finally cable.

Pride, who declined to give his age for fear of age discrimination in the tight job market, thinks Corbett owes an apology to him and the half million other Pennsylvanians who are out of work.

"I stand ready to work," he said.

Campaign spokesman Kevin Harley said Corbett, the state attorney general, understands that most unemployed Pennsylvanians are trying hard to find work and has met with a number of them while campaigning at job training centers.

"Tom Corbett knows first-hand that people who are unemployed are diligently working to find a job," said Harley. "He was relaying a story that he heard he regrets that he didn't give a full answer."

Democratic candidate Onoroto called Corbett naive to believe there are jobs going unfilled.

"That Pennsylvaniasn are lazy and don't want to work is an outrageous position to take and he's simply wrong," Onorato said Monday. "The problem with jobs in Pennsylvania is not with the workers. It's that the jobs are gone. We've got to bring jobs back."

But Kevin Shivers, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business-Pennsylvania, which represents small business owners, said some of his members have told him about new hires asking to be "paid under the table" or to keep a position open so they can run out their unemployment compensation.

He was unaware of any employers who could not find workers.

Some people who have lost their jobs say have taken part-time jobs to supplement the government compensation.

"I'm not on some kind of vacation here. This is not vacation pay," said Michael J. Hughes, an out-of work banker who has been looking for a job since April 2009. Hughes teaches business courses at a local college, and his benefits will run out soon.

On Saturday, Hughes, of Havertown, was helping register more than 100 unemployed people who gathered in a Cabrini College lecture hall to network and to listen to a lecture on interviewing skills.

Hughes said he knows two people who are collecting benefits and are working on the side as bartenders at the Shore while they continue the search during the day for fulltime employment.

Workers have traditionally received 26 weeks of unemployment compensation, but Congress granted extensions during the recession, allowing some workers to receive as many as 99 weeks of unemployment.

Unless Congress approves another extension, which appears unlikely given the rancor in Washington over additional spending, compensation for those currently unemployed will run out after 26 weeks.

State unemployment compensation provides payments of half a worker's weekly pay, up to a maximum of $564. The average check for a Pennsylvanian is $310.

"People are not getting rich off of unemployment," said Troy Thompson, spokesman for the state Department of Labor and Industry. "They are not putting money in the bank. It's keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads."

He urged businesses to contact the state if they have positions available so they can be listed on the statewide Careerlink site, which matches employers with those seeking jobs.

According to the U.S. Labor Department, there are five unemployed people for every job opening.

McGee would beg to differ.

"It seems everyone's going for the same job," he said, adding despite his work experience and newly acquired associates degree in business administration, he has not received a single interview in 13 months.

"It's not a picnic," said McGee, 32. "There is no worse feeling in the world then waking up and having no place to go."

Hellier said she left a message Monday at Corbett's campaign office requesting a meeting.

"I've been going out of my way to find a job and there's nothing out there," said Hillier, who was a purchasing and inventory manager for Apptec, now WuXiApptec, a biotech/pharmaceutical firm whose Philadelphia manufacturing facility closed in 2008. "I'd like to sit down with him and educate him about what it's like."

Pride said he wants to know which Pennsylvania companies told Corbett they can't find workers.

He shouldn't count on getting that information. Harley said Corbett would not be releasing the names of the companies he spoke to.