At a time when unemployment rates among Blacks and Latinos far exceed the national average of 9.7 percent, one of South Los Angeles’ oldest nonprofit organizations is using new methods to push members of those demographics back into the workforce.

Assisting more than 50,000 people throughout its four work source centers every year, the Los Angeles Urban League has seen an uptick in the number of job seekers — in different age groups — looking to use its services, which have amounted to roughly 70,000.

But the task of placing them back into the workforce has been a difficult one. Job searches, according to the League’s senior vice president Trevor Ware, which used to take six weeks and produce results are now taking anywhere from six months to a year.

“Our job seekers are [often] mature workers who have had long term employment on one or another job and they now have been let go during lay-offs, mass layoffs in some cases,” said the League’s employment specialist Sharon Cooper-Lacy. “Many had been working 20 to 25 years on a job and grew within the company.”

League president Blair Taylor added that the organization is assisting more people with college degrees. “The person with the master’s degree who we may not have seen a lot of prior to this economic downturn,” added Taylor, “we are seeing much more of now, even Ph.D. level folk are coming in looking for work.”

In addition, the organization has also been seeing a higher re-entry and veteran population.

Due to the economic descent, added Taylor, the workforce is in a time of jobless recovery, where corporate earnings have rebounded but unemployment rates have remained steady. The issue, he said, is that everyone gets pushed down and now lower skilled workers or those with little to no education are “getting knocked off the ladder altogether” and find it much more difficult to get a job than those who are multi-skilled or have a college degree.

In many cases, he said, employers are looking for those with the highest form of education because they are presumably work ready and would not need as much training, if any at all, as would someone with a lower skill set or little education.

From Ware’s experience, it is not always the very talented who land jobs but those who invest more time in the job search process, like looking at multiple job search engines daily, researching the industry, updating one’s resume, taking workshops on how to interview and how to present oneself, and attending job fairs.

But this is where creative and innovative thinking comes in.

The options, said WorkSource business services representatives and employment specialists, are many. However, their most difficult work comes through the form of getting clients to understand that because the job market has shrunk they may not be able to get the same pay or work in the same field. In some cases, they may have to take secondary training courses to learn a new skill set or start from an entry level position and work their way up the ladder again.

When the recession first began, the League was contacted by clients who were frantic about their situations. Some suffered extreme depression, so much so, that the League brought in a therapist to conduct workshops on coping with job loss.

“The humility of it is realizing that you are starting over,” said Cooper-Lacy.
Many have taken up second jobs as supplemental income, are cutting back on activities, such as trips and movies, and are sticking to the basics.

The unemployed can take advantage of computers at any of the League’s WorkSource Centers or they can go through more intensive service programs, where the person meets with a case manager, is coached, given recruitment leads, is sent out on interviews, and in some cases meet with an employer at one of the League’s sites. At times, said Ware, people have been hired on the spot when it comes to the latter.

The League also has a transitional subsidized employment program that came as a result of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars. It allows the organization to take those individuals who are hard to place and puts them with companies. The government pays the individual for six months with the hope that “at the end that employer is going to hire them after having saved money and having increased their productivity from these candidates,” said the League’s Business Services Representative Kenneth White.

Other supportive services come through the Workforce Investment Act, which has a training aspect and mandatory program, but assists the unemployed until they find placement. One such service is paying for books, writing tools, transportation and uniforms.

On a case-by-case basis the program has also helped people with their cell phone bills, automobile repairs and child care.

As a component of the program, once complete, the person is assigned to a job developer who will attempt to find them a job in the same area that they were trained in. They are also given unemployment benefits until they’ve completed training.

In addition, supportive services are set in place so that once a person gains employment they can be assisted until they get their first check, be it gas vouchers, bus tokens or a new outfit.

Since July 2009, the League’s West Adams WorkSouce Center, 5681 W. Jefferson Blvd., which the Wave visited last Tuesday, has reached more than 50 percent of their job placement goal — 276 — required by the city — who helps fund the center — and its ARRA goal of 68. They expect to surpass the benchmark by the end of the year.

Despite this, the figures go to show that “we don’t guarantee employment, but we teach you how to get the job,” said Cooper-Lacy. “We teach you how to fish here.”

The League announced last week that it will be receiving an in-kind donation of Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, worth $500,000, that will be up and running by fall.

The software, said Taylor, will allow the league to more efficiently service foundation and corporate grants, boost partner and membership databases and services and increase the efficiency of League WorkSource Centers that provide job training and placement assistance.

More importantly, the software will be configured to track job applications and employers partaking in its programs, as will it better match applicants with jobs and monitor outcomes.

Job seekers will “be linked to our work source centers in a way that is much more technology driven than it is today, which is driven manually,” said Taylor. “We’ll be able to analyze our business and our program performance, helping us be more data driven and helping us gather information that will allow us to be more circumspect on when we’re hitting the mark and when we aren’t.”

For Curt Kolcun, Microsoft’s vice president for the U.S. public sector, “our collaboration with the League represents more than an altruistic gesture,” he said in a statement, “but a sound investment in developing future generations of African-American leadership.”

Over the last year, the League has also been overhauling its in-house operations, putting a heavy focus on finance and human resources. It also implemented a new Human Resources information system, which helps them to track and train their own employees.