Local
Monday, December 29, 2008

Fewer hired via Employment Services

By Kristi Eaton
Reporter

File photo shows Labor Division director Barry Hirshbein and a Labor Department employee demonstrating the new processing equipment and software implemented at the department. (Saipan Tribune) Despite the Department of Labor creating a new website and adding new processing equipment and software in an effort to make jobs searches and registration easier for employees and employers, Employment Services is on par to place only a fraction of the numbers of U.S. citizens in jobs compared to past years.

As of Sept. 30 this year, 1,389 citizens had registered with Employment Services with 115, or 8 percent, hired. Since 2004, at least 20 percent of citizens registered with the service were hired each year.

The numbers are part of the Department of Labor's Deputy Secretary Cinta Kaipat's declaration supporting Gov. Benigno Fitial's federalization lawsuit against the U.S. government.

Kaipat notes that, “others who registered found employment on their own and still others emigrated to Guam, Hawaii, or the mainland U.S. and found jobs there.”

According to the declaration, Employment Services conducts an assessment of skills after a U.S. citizen registers with the service. When job openings occur, Employment Services refers the person with the appropriate skills. The employer who received the referral must hire the person or explain why the person is not qualified for the job or was not hired.

Kaipat, in the declaration, takes issue with reported unemployment rates for the Commonwealth, particularly among residents. She cites the estimate of 14 percent total unemployment among the Commonwealth and 20 percent unemployment among U.S. citizens in the Chamorro and Carolinian communities aged 18 to 65 years.

“From my knowledge of the community, my experience working on labor and employment matters, and the data gathered by the Labor Department, I believe these estimates are wrong and far too high,” she said, adding that the Labor Department normally has about 600 people registered at any given time in addition to an estimated 400 to 500 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and Freely Associated States citizens looking for work on their own. With these numbers, she estimates the unemployment rate at about 7.7 percent.

Kaipat said she believes there is cultural bias in the way the U.S. collects unemployment data in the CNMI. She lists five reasons: surveys are done primarily in English, with Spanish the only alternative; and foreign workers, who conduct the surveys because they can be paid cheaper thus making the surveys cheaper overall, do not speak English very well or clearly and “their accents may make their spoken English difficult for local people to understand.”

Also, Kaipat said, local people are under the impression the surveys require a “yes” answer to the question about actively looking for work or their eligibility for food stamps will be revoked.

Fourth, some people counted as unemployed are in the process of moving to Guam, Hawaii or the U.S. mainland for work. And lastly, employment surveys disregard the traditional employment within the extended family structure that is a full time job itself, she said.

In the declaration, Kaipat shares details of the Employment Services website that was created in March, including the figure that since Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, 6,886 jobs were posted on the site.

In November, the Labor Department increased its fees for business employers from $250 to $300 to help fund the new site and equipment that totaled $350,000.