Summer Jobs Are Scarce Despite Modest Improvement in Economy

Despite a modest turnaround in Ventura County’s economy, employers and employment agencies predict that they will not come close to finding work for the thousands of teen-agers who want summer jobs.

“The economy is just barely starting to wake up. Right now, we have many more applicants than jobs,” said Christopher Cruse, a member of a summer task force at the state Employment Development Department’s north Oxnard office.

Cruse said he is receiving as many as 30 calls a day from young people seeking summer work but has been able to place less than half of those seeking work in such positions as waiters, waitresses and shipping clerks.

“We’re going into the community every day asking employers to give youngsters a chance. In many cases, business people are anxious to help. They realize it’s important that kids have something to do besides just hanging out on the street.”

Bobbie Espinoza, who heads the task force, said the north Oxnard office, which serves Camarillo, Ventura, Oxnard and other communities in the western county, is conducting a pilot program this summer aimed at finding jobs for youths ages 16 to 21, regardless of income. In the past, she said, a separate program dealt with only disadvantaged youths.

“Generally, companies are paying the minimum wage of $4.25 an hour, though we have a few that start people at $5,” Espinoza said.

The Employment Development Department’s north and south Oxnard offices usually place about 500 young people in summer jobs each year.

Linda Flanigan, executive director of Conejo Youth Employment Services in Thousand Oaks, said that right now, “We have five or six kids for every available position.”

The service is one of several nonprofit agencies that help find jobs for Ventura County youngsters 13 and older.

“We’ll have between 900 and 1,000 new applicants this month,” Flanigan said. “Unfortunately, we expect to be able to find jobs for only about 200 of them.”

Besides the relatively low placement level, Flanigan said she regrets that many openings pay less than minimum wage.

“Of 13 job orders that came in Monday afternoon, 10 were for low-paying jobs doing baby-sitting or yardwork,” Flanigan said. Such jobs usually pay $3.50 an hour or even less, she said.

Flanigan said her office also expects to place 62 youths in libraries, parks and other public facilities this summer as part of the Summer Youth Employment and Training Program.

The program, which is federally funded through the Job Training Policy Council of Ventura County, placed several hundred disadvantaged youths in jobs last summer.

Joyce Waldron, executive director of the Ventura Youth Employment Service, said her office has received more than 400 applications, about the same as last year at this time. She said it is hard to estimate how many of these young people will find work, “but we always have more applicants than positions.”

Waldron, whose office places about 4,000 youths annually in permanent and temporary jobs, added: “The economy is tight, but it’s loosening up to some extent. Within a year, I see things beginning to balance out much better.”

Ventura County’s summer job picture appears to reflect employment prospects in the county as a whole. Linda Reed, an Employment Development Department labor market analyst, said the county’s jobless rate fell to 6.1% in April, the latest month for which figures are available.

The April rate represented the third straight monthly decline but was still significantly higher than in April, 1990, when only 4.3% of the county’s workers were reported unemployed.

Still, most of the county’s traditional summer employers said they are hiring.

Lisa McInally, personnel coordinator of Paschen Management Corp. in Camarillo, which operates eight McDonald’s restaurants in Ventura County and one in Santa Barbara County, said all the units continue to hire this summer.

“The most openings will be at the units that are closest to the beach--on Harbor Boulevard in Ventura, and in Carpinteria,” she said. “We expect to add about a dozen people, mostly part time, at each of those locations.”

At the Sears, Roebuck & Co. store in Oxnard, Manager Don Facciano said his store has hired more than a dozen new employees in the past two weeks.

As a rule, Facciano said, his store hires part-timers for year-round, rather than summer, positions. “If they’re going back to school in the fall, that’s no problem. We arrange their schedules so they can continue working.”

James W. Word, manager of the J.C. Penney store in Ventura, said he has openings for “floaters” to work as vacation-relief salespeople in various departments. The positions involve 20 to 25 hours a week and start at $5 or more an hour, he said.

Word said he is always gratified when a part-time summer employee continues with J.C. Penney in the fall--which is the way that he started his career with the company 38 years ago.