Vermont businesses are hiring and Governor Peter Shumlin joined with 14 of them today to highlight thousands of open positions around the state. The Governor also encouraged job seekers interested in advanced manufacturing to attend a job fair this Thursday, April 30th, organized by the Vermont Department of Labor for IBM, to be held at the Sheraton in Burlington from noon to 6 pm. No pre-registration is required.
“Vermont has many businesses looking for qualified workers right now,” Shumlin said. “It is incredibly gratifying to seeemployers grow and thrive right here in the Green Mountain State. Today I’m standing with 14 businesses that currently have over 700 open jobs, but that is just a fraction of the thousands of job openings statewide. With unemployment back to pre-recession levels and employers hiring, we’re moving in the right direction.”
IBM, which has seen increased customer demand for its radio frequency chips used in the mobile market, is looking to hire about 100 new employees to fill advanced manufacturing and other jobs in its chip division.The jobs will carry over after approval of the IBM Microelectronics Division acquisition by GlobalFoundries.
"IBM has one of the most innovative workforces anywhere, right here in Vermont," Shumlin said. "I am very glad to see the plant hiring ahead of the GlobalFoundries acquisition, and hope many interested workers come to the job fair this Thursday to join the long tradition of chip manufacturing in Vermont."
Combined, the growing companies standing with the governor today currently have over 700 open positions. These include: Precyse, Husky (23 open positions); Revision (25 open positions); Blue Cross/Blue Shield (ten open positions); Vermont Information Processing (ten open positions); Dartmouth-Hitchcock (398 open positions); Ben & Jerry’s; Hypertherm (15 open positions); National Life (100 open positions); Mylan (15 open positions); Competitive Computing (six open positions); IBM (100 open positions); Darn Tough (15 open positions).
In addition to IBM, the Governor singled out Darn Tough in Northfield and Triad in Williston, both of which have big expansion plans. Darn Tough plans to add 500 positions in the next five years and Triad plans to add 100 positions in the next three years.
A Department of Labor analysis of online job posting data as of January 2015 found that there are 6,774 industry classified job postings in Vermont. Over 50 percent of these online postings are found in health care and social assistance; retail trade; and educational services. Another 20 percent of the online job postings are in finance and insurance; manufacturing; public administration; and professional, scientific, and technical services. While this data includes many Vermont employers, it is not comprehensive as not all Vermont employers post jobs online, and in some cases jobs are posted on other sites.
Recent job fairs around Vermont have also shown expanding employers in need of workers. A job fair in Central Vermont on April 1st had 60 employers with openings and one in St. Johnsbury on April 16th had 30.
TheGovernor also highlighted strong jobs and unemployment data:
· Vermont has seen an increase of over 14,000 jobs since January 2011, according to Vermont Department of Labor data. About 90 percent of that job growth has come from the private sector.
· Vermont total non-farm employment has now reported ten consecutive months of above pre-recessionary levels.
· The recent economic expansion in Vermont has been led by a combination of sectors, most notably: Non-Durable Manufacturing, Professional & Business Services, Health Care & Social Assistance, and Leisure & Hospitality.
· By metropolitan area, the Burlington-South Burlington area is tied for the fourth lowest not-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the country at 3.0 percent.
· Vermont’s U-3 unemployment rate of 3.8 percent is tied for the sixth lowest in America and is the lowest east of the Mississippi. While the U-3 rate is the most commonly used measure of unemployment, alternative measures are also trending in the right direction and beating national averages. The U-6 rate in Vermont, the broadest measure of unemployment, was 8.6 percent through the first quarter of 2015, tied for the eighth lowest in America and much less than the 11.6 percent national rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.