State Fair job seekers flock to fair

Less than two months before the start of the Minnesota State Fair, organizers are scrambling to fill thousands of jobs. The 12-day end-of-summer get-together requires a huge temporary labor force of ticket takers, food servers, trash haulers, and other workers. With low unemployment in the region, vendors have to search for employees.

Ann Chesin, an 18-year veteran of the Minnesota State Fair, operates the Chicago Dogs stand in the beer garden along with her family, and more.

At full steam, 28 employees cook, serve and take orders. Chesin has been at this long enough to see ups and downs in the economy. And with Minnesota's jobless rate holding steady at a low, seasonally-adjusted 3.8 percent, she said finding temporary workers for the fair is becoming increasingly difficult.

"Wherever you go there's a help wanted sign," she said.

Chesin is ready to hire anyone who's willing to put on an apron and a smile and sling hot dogs from Aug. 25 through Labor Day. No previous employment? Not a problem.

"We're not necessarily looking for experience. We like to teach them," Chesin said. "Sometimes people with experience have got their own ideas about how to do things."

Every year the fair hires several thousand temporary workers. This summer, organizers are making an extra effort to find them. They held the first ever State Fair job fair Wednesday. Chesin and dozens of other vendors sat at folding tables inside the Progress Center as prospective employees walked up for interviews.

Before the doors opened, hundreds of people had already queued up around the block, many of them teens eager to work. Josephine Johnson, 17, of St. Paul may be a perfect fit for the hot dog stand or any of the other positions. She's has never had a job before, though she's filled out a lot of applications.

"There's the whole experience paradox, where you have to have experience for the job, but in order to get a job you have to have experience," Johnson said. "So it's just trying to break through that paradox and get a first job."

Sixteen-year-old Tanajea Copeland walked into the Progress Center and walked out an hour later with a job at Blue Barn, a relatively new restaurant on the fairgrounds. She'll be serving up delicacies such as blue cheese corn fritters and chicken in waffle cones.

Even with a robust job market, Copeland, who lives in Minneapolis, tells a similar employment tale — it's been tricky for people her age to find summer work.

"It's really hard, because a lot of jobs, they want you to be older or able to drive and stuff like that. I can drive, but not legally, so it's kind of hard," she said.

Economists say there's another paradox: part-time positions that require little to no experience have been harder to fill as employers create more higher-paying full time jobs. But at the same time, Oriane Casale with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development said many of those who could fill these jobs aren't being hired. Teen unemployment has been stubbornly high.

"There really are a lot of youth out there who are having a very difficult time for a variety of reasons finding employment," Casale said. "That, of course, makes these jobs very attractive, getting a little bit of work experience under your belt makes it a lot easier next summer to find a job."

While it has been falling, the unemployment rate for 16 to 19-year-old Minnesotans was 7.6 percent in May.

The hiring push at the State Fair could put a small dent in that figure — at least for a short time in late August and early September. Fair spokesperson Brienna Schuette said the idea behind the job fair was to make the hiring process as smooth as possible.

"We know that there's a lot of competition in the job market right now, and we wanted to create a fun atmosphere making jobs very accessible and making it efficient to get jobs at the State Fair for people," she said.

Schuette said Wednesday night's event brought in around 500 new employees, but the fair still has a lot more hiring to do and will continue filling jobs throughout the summer.

Most of the positions pay $9.50 or $10 an hour. People applying must be at least 16 and be able to work for all 12 days of the State Fair.