Job losses hit Missouri hard, but not in Cape

June 14 was a difficult day for Kim Groves. That was the day the 41-year-old mother of three lost her job.

"It was a difficult position to find myself in," said Groves, a Cape Girardeau resident. "I didn't do anything wrong. I was doing a good job and it was still taken away from me. Of course that's tough."

Groves was the director of Alumni Services at Southeast Missouri State University and her position was terminated because of severe budget cuts.

Groves certainly wasn't alone. In fact, the state's Department of Economic Development recently reported that 55,000 Missourians lost jobs over the past year.

Fortunately, Groves had set some money aside and didn't have to live check to check.

"But it made me realize how quickly finances can change your life," she said. "You go through a self-assessment: Where do I go now? What can I do? How well have I prepared?"

Tough economic times are leaving out-of-work people across the country with similar questions. But apparently Missouri is among those states being hit hardest.

Missouri's workforce shrunk by just over 2 percent between June 2001 and June 2002, leaving the state with the highest percentage of job losses in the nation. The number of Missourians with jobs in June of this year was 2,687,200. Local economic development officials say Cape Girardeau was largely unaffected by the problem, however.

Joseph Driskill, the director of the Department of Economic Development, said he was disturbed by the job losses.

"Clearly this is a troubling trend and further evidence that despite some indications the U.S. economy is improving, Missouri is still experiencing major problems from this national recession," Driskill said. "We continue to fear that Missouri will be at the end and not at the forefront of an eventual economic recovery."

Driskill pointed out that Missouri's decline in manufacturing jobs, which earlier this year was the third highest in the nation on a percentage-basis, has been leveling off. But now job losses are being felt in other employment sectors.

Of the 55,000 lost jobs in the last fiscal year, 20,300 were manufacturing. In Missouri, state government's decrease of 5,500 jobs over the past fiscal year represents 10 percent of the total job loss, about the same as construction.

Business services accounted for 9.1 percent of the state's job loss, the finance, real estate and insurance industries have represented 7.8 percent of the loss, while wholesale trade's share has been 6.6 percent.

No new industry

There hasn't been a lot of interest from new industry coming to the area in recent months, either, said Mitch Robinson, executive director of the Cape Girardeau Area Industrial Recruitment Association.

"Unfortunately, we've had a very slow summer," Robinson said. "Nothing like last summer."

Locally, within the past few weeks, Robinson said it's been picking up.

"Within the last three weeks, we've seen an increase in activity, people looking for buildings or sites for business," he said. "Nothing major, but it's encouraging."

Fewer new businesses means fewer new jobs to replace the lost ones.

It sounds bleak, but Steve Fuemmeler, supervisor for the local Missouri Division Workforce Development office, said the news isn't all bad.

"I suspect very few of those job losses came from Southeast Missouri," he said. "We've had a few small hits, but most of those losses came from the large, metropolitan areas."

Fuemmeler said there was no exact way to gauge how many of those losses came from Cape Girardeau. But he pointed out that the unemployment rate in Cape Girardeau County is at 4.3 percent, which is up slightly from May, but a number that is down from this time last year and one he considers "pretty stable and manageable."

Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri seem to be immune from statewide trends in employment "because we're so diversified," Fuemmeler said.

"There's no one major employer that affects it a whole lot," he said. "We may have lost some jobs, but we haven't had any huge layoffs. If we can maintain an unemployment rate of 4 percent, it's really not too bad."

Cape not immune

But Cape Girardeau hasn't been totally immune. In October, BioKyowa decided to discontinue production of farm-grade amino acid lysine and food-grade nucleic acids, which resulted in the loss of 45 employees.

When Albertsons grocery store closed its doors in April, 80 people were out of work. More recently Procter & Gamble also has bought some new diaper machines that will require fewer people to operate, Robinson said. He said they are in the process of buying out some contracts. Robinson said he didn't know how many employees will be out of work.

Larry Stahlman, a spokesman at P&G, did not return phone calls.

But Robinson agreed that things could be worse.

"We really haven't seen anything on a major scale," Robinson said. "We've been fortunate."

Fuemmeler agreed.

"There's still a lot of manufacturing," he said. "For every company that lays off, there's others that's going strong: Rubbermaid, Gilster-Mary Lee. They can't find enough help."

Meanwhile, Groves has been able to spend the summer with her three sons while taking her time looking for another job.

"Everything happens for a reason," she said. "I'm just looking for the next door."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137