AP: Stores See Surge in Applicants for Holiday Help; DHL Firings Devastates Ohio Town

No surprises here, but quite sad overall. '79-'81 Redux.

• The odds of landing a part-time job at department store operator Bealls Outlet Stores Inc. this holiday season are slimmer than getting into Harvard: It's one out of every 45.
• Don't think the chances are any better at 7-Eleven. One California store received more than 100 applicants in a week and a half for jobs that pay $8.50 per hour -- and the retailer doesn't even usually hire holiday workers.
• From department stores and convenience chains to call centers, managers who only a year ago had to scramble to fill holiday jobs are seeing a surge in the number of seasoned applicants -- many of them laid off in other sectors and desperate for a way to pay the bills.
• The flood of jobseekers comes even as the retail industry drastically cuts back on holiday hiring because of the drop-off in consumer spending, and the applicants -- who differ from the usual pool, teens or stay-at-home moms looking for extra spending money -- reflect the nation's fast-deteriorating job market.
• At UPS Inc., which is just starting to ramp up its holiday hiring, as much as 30 percent of the seasonal hires in the Northeast are coming from the ranks of the recently laid off, said spokeswoman Ronna Charles Branch. In the past, she said, applicants for holiday jobs at the world's biggest shipping carrier were largely students.
• Jean Telfort, a 41-year-old Army veteran, has applied for dozens of part-time jobs, including at Macy's and Nordstrom Inc., with no success. He needs money to help pay the rent and to pay down his $60,000 credit card bill, which includes his college tuition charges. (again I think foreign readers just have no idea the burden college costs have become in the United States - sets some people back a decade from graduation to pay these off - but that's ok - socialism is bad. Unless it's for our banks) "I am looking for anything to carry me over," said the Freeport, N.Y., who returned full-time to Hofstra University where he's pursuing a degree in public relations after he served 11 years in the Army.
• John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, noted that holiday hiring will fall significantly below last year's total, which was the lowest since 2003.

So who is applying nowadays for lower rung service/retail jobs?

• What's so striking, store executives say, is how desperate the applicants are. Rob Duncan, chief operating officer of Alpine Access, a "virtual" call center provider with 7,500 employees working from their homes across the country, estimated a 10 to 15 percent rise in applicants from a year ago. In the past, they were mostly stay-at-home moms looking for part-time work. Now the company, which handles customer service for stores like J. Crew as well as tech support, debt collection and financial services, is seeing more men and more midlevel managers looking for at least 35 hours of work.
• David Ortega, a training store manager at the 7-Eleven in Citrus Heights, Calif., that got more than 100 applications, noted that many applicants have management experience -- including those who even owned their own construction business. The store in a suburb of Sacramento, which has been hard hit by the housing slump, usually saw candidates who came straight out of high school, he said. (sounds exactly like Michigan & Ohio the past 3-4 years - looks like our virus is spreading)

Speaking of Ohio, in case you missed it DHL is cutting 9500 US jobs - and it seems the great majority (7000) are in one town in Ohio: Wilmington. Just a devastating blow.

• When the owner of the big shipping company DHL U.S. Express announced on Monday that it planned to cut 9,500 jobs in the United States, the news hit this town the hardest. Wilmington is home to a sprawling distribution hub, and more than 7,000 jobs will disappear, devastating the local economy.
• “This is a catastrophic event for the entire region,” said David L. Raizk, the mayor of Wilmington, a city of about 12,000 just 40 miles north of Cincinnati.
• The move was a sharp reversal for Deutsche Post, the German company that owns DHL, which had said that it was planning to maintain its American operations by turning over its domesticair-cargo service to its rival United Parcel Service. The express package business has been suffering under the sharp economic downturn: express shipments in the United States carried by the top three companies fell in the third quarter for the first time since the 2001 recession.