November 10, 2015, by Daniel Moore
A series of life-altering events — the kind that most people confront over an extended time — hit Cyndy Glynn all at once.
Her position as director of marketing at a medical device company in Cleveland was eliminated. She moved back to Pittsburgh to take care of her ailing mother, who passed away shortly thereafter. Then, she was faced with the prospect of finding another job as her unemployment benefits ran out.
That was back in early 2013, and she hasn’t found full-time work since.
“I’m here without connections, no feeling of having connections — feeling, rather, as if on an unemployment island,” Ms. Glynn said, who has 25 years of work experience and holds an undergraduate degree in advertising from Kent State University and a master’s degree in communication research from Cleveland State University.
She was one of 25 Allegheny County residents who gathered Monday to begin a nationally touted program that tries to stem the flow of workers leaving the labor force and then abandoning hope of ever finding a job. The Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board kicked off the program, called Platform to Employment, with an orientation at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in East Liberty featuring the program’s founder Joseph Carbone.
Labor force participation remains low
Mr. Carbone described his program as a direct response to the lingering effects of the recession. Politicians, journalists and economists tend to focus too narrowly on the unemployment rate, which has fallen close to 5 percent nationally, as evidence the country is recovering, he said.
“They don’t talk about the people who have left the workforce out of complete disgust,” Mr. Carbone said. Those people, he said, “get to a point where they feel their not really competitive anymore … and they leave.”
He noted that to be counted as unemployed on government surveys, a person must have made an effort in the prior four weeks to look for a job. Such a measurement excludes those who have given up, he said, and the unemployment rate can actually improve as more people lose hope.
The national jobs report for October showed participation in the labor force remained around 62 percent of the civilian population, its lowest level in 38 years.
In southwestern Pennsylvania, the local workforce lost 3,900 in August, according to seasonally adjusted labor data. In September, the workforce stayed flat, but unemployment rose to 5.3 percent as 1,700 more people were counted as out of work.
Mr. Carbone said it’s unfair to simply blame businesses for not hiring the long-term unemployed. More often, he said, companies bring in workers by using staffing agencies, which can simplify the hiring process and shield employers from certain burdens by keeping employees on someone else’s payroll.
But that can be frustrating to applicants. Charles Dameron, 57, who’s been looking for a full-time job in biotechnology outside of academia after being denied tenure at Duquesne University, said it’s difficult to apply for jobs without receiving much feedback.
It used to be “you could re-tune yourself and keep reapplying,” said Mr. Dameron. “But everything’s electronic now. You put in an application, and most of the time they don’t even acknowledge they got your application.”
That is why Platform to Employment is structured like a staffing agency, at least for a month or two.
The program, which achieved breakthrough success in southwestern Connecticut in 2011 and now has been replicated in roughly a dozen other areas, begins with five weeks of classes, four days a week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the library.
Classes feature career readiness workshops, financial counseling and — not least of all, Mr. Carbone said — a little boost of self-esteem.
Participants then find and apply for job openings with an added incentive for employers: The program will pay the position’s wages for the first four weeks. After that, the company will step in and pay half the earned wages for another four weeks.
Using that model, Mr. Carbone said, the program has touted a 90 percent placement rate.
“It’s a slam dunk,” he said during the luncheon, which included representatives from employers like Mascaro Construction and Bayer. “You have nothing to lose, everything to gain, and you’d be doing your corporate responsibility.”
With a $300,000 National Emergency Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the workforce investment board has enough funding for a second round of about 25 participants in the spring. The program is accepting applications at www.platformtoemployment.com.