Seasonal Hiring Improving in Florida
MIAMI (CBS4) - The latest national unemployment numbers show for the third week in a row, claims for new unemployment benefits are dropping.
Last week, 434,000 people filed for new unemployment benefits and that's down by about 21,000 people from the previous week.
Long-term unemployment is also down by 122,000 people nationwide, even though former workers are still collecting extended benefits.
Locally, there are definite signs of a slowly-improving job market.
But the big question remains, is it just seasonal part-time work, or will it translate into permanent full time jobs that go beyond the end of the year?
College student Michelle Rico is still discouraged about how tough it is to find a job.
"It's hard because there are so many other people out there looking for the same thing, asking for the same jiobs and doing the same interviews that you're doing", the Miami-Dade College student says.
But the latest state job figures show more than 234,000 new "help-wanted " ads were posted in Florida last month, and that's the highest since the summer of 2008.
2,700 new positions were added to Miami-Dade's job market in September and that leads the state.
Some local job counselors say they've been hearing about an increasing number of part-time job openings since the end of the summer.
But that's starting to change.
"Clients are calling for part time warehouse help for shipping but they are also now asking for permanent financial and management positions in their company", says Odalys Girado of Doral's RightHire Staffing.
So where are the new jobs coming from?
According to state figures from the Agency for Workforce Innovation, the top-growing fields are education-health with 39,200 new jobs, professional services with 15,400 positions and trade-related Ffelds with 13,600 new jobs.
Full-time hiring is slowly picking up again in some specialized fields like health care and professional services.
But "help wanted" signs for permanent positions are expected to remain scarce through at least the first half of next year according to some national labor analysts.
