![Erin Cunningham/The Gazette
William Roseboro, 38, of Hagerstown was laid off recently from a job in a Frederick quarry. The father of five is falling behind in child support payments and medical bills. \"It\'s depressing. It\'s hard to find work now for a competitive wage,\" he says.](/storyimage/PN/20111202/NEWS/712029633/AR/0/AR-712029633.jpg "Erin Cunningham/The Gazette
William Roseboro, 38, of Hagerstown was laid off recently from a job in a Frederick quarry. The father of five is falling behind in child support payments and medical bills. \\"It\'s depressing. It\'s hard to find work now for a competitive wage,\\" he says.")
Three weeks ago, William Roseboro was laid off from his job in a Frederick quarry, and now he is beginning to fall behind on bills and child support payments.
The father of five said he also is struggling to pay his rent and for his medical bills and blood pressure medicine, which can cost as much as $240 per month because he is uninsured.
Now, with the holidays here, Roseboro, 38, of Hagerstown, said he is losing confidence that he will find a job.
“It’s depressing. It’s hard to find work now for a competitive wage,” he said last week. “It just seems impossible.”
Roseboro is not alone.
In Hagerstown, which was hit hard by the decline in manufacturing, the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in October, the last month for which data were available. By comparison, the state of Maryland had an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in October.
Hagerstown’s unemployment rate is down slightly from September, when it was 10.1 percent, the highest rate among cities in Maryland.
On the morning of Nov. 21, Roseboro was one of a dozen people at Washington County’s One-Stop Job Center in Hagerstown. He was using the center’s computer to apply for several jobs, including as a packaging handler for UPS.
“I’m finding myself applying for jobs I’m not accustomed to doing,” said Roseboro, a former correctional officer. “Anything to get a dollar.”
He also has inquired about working at a prison in West Virginia and has applied for jobs as far away as Montgomery County.
“I’m willing to hold a sign on the corner if it pays,” he said.
The same goes for Kevin Sikes, 30, of Hagerstown, who has been unemployed for about four months and typically works in paving, but said he has been applying for seasonal work as a sales clerk.
For now, Sikes said he has been staying home with his five children while his wife works as a nurse at a retirement home. He is hoping to have a job by Christmas, he said.
“It’s definitely depressing,” he said of his job search. “I have kids, and they want everything.”
Suzette Snyder, the state’s labor exchange administrator in western Maryland, said Hagerstown’s One-Stop Job Center served an average of 118 people per day in October.
That month, a total of 2,306 people visited the center — up from 1,790 the same time a year ago.
In Worcester County, the economy largely relies on tourists visiting Ocean City — leading unemployment to spike during the off-season, said Bill Badger, the county’s new director of economic development.
Badger, who began work Monday, said part of his mission will be to lower the county’s unemployment rate, which was 10.6 percent in October — the highest in the state.
In January and February of this year, unemployment in Worcester hovered around 17 percent.
“Once the season ends, then the unemployment rate gets worse. That’s been the trend here,” he said. “Part of my mission is to create jobs that are here all year-round.”
The stagnant national economy means that a lot of companies are not looking to relocate, Badger said, so he expects his focus to be primarily on retaining and expanding existing businesses. The agriculture and poultry industries also are part of the economic foundation of Worcester, he noted.
While the job market seems dire in many parts of the state, officials tasked with economic development in some areas see signs of hope.
“Things are better than they were a year ago,” said Steve Silverman, head of Montgomery County’s Department of Economic Development.
Montgomery’s unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in October — down from 5.4 percent the year before, according to state data.
In the past 10 years, Montgomery County has not created any net new jobs, despite the fact that the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area created 420,000 new jobs — more than any other metro area in the country, according to Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.
Northern Virginia, which lured Bechtel’s global operations headquarters from Frederick last month, now accounts for 46 percent of the regional economy compared to about 30 percent for suburban Maryland, which includes Montgomery, Fuller said in a report earlier this month to the Montgomery County Council.
“You’re the strength of the state’s economy,” Fuller told council members. “And yet, it kind of looks like you’re in the defensive mode a lot of the time.”
Silverman said the county’s unemployment rate will fall when national unemployment drops.
“We’re fighting a national economic downturn, which we can’t change alone,” he said.
That hasn’t stopped him and other county officials from trying. The county recently celebrated its success in keeping the federal Health and Human Services Agency — and its 3,000 employees — in the county.
In Prince George’s County, the focus is on retaining and growing businesses already operating there, as well as attracting new companies, according to Larry Hentz, the business development specialist for the county’s Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization.
“We love attraction,” he said. “But you don’t want to lose what you have because then you can never grow.”
Recently, he said, the county was able to retain Eight O’Clock Coffee’s manufacturing plant in Landover despite concerns from the company that it would not be able to expand at that location.
Prince George’s also will bring dozens of jobs to the county through the opening of about six new Evergreen Supermarkets, Hentz said.
As a retention strategy, Hentz said his organization is preparing to train more people to conduct face-to-face visits with existing businesses with leases that are set to expire within the next two to three years. The focus, he said, will be on learning what those companies need in order to stay in the county and possibly expand.
Silverman recently announced a similar plan in which his department would increase contact with businesses.
“We think it’s going to get better, but not in a dramatic way,” he said of the economy. “I think we’ll see some incremental improvement, but I don’t think we’ll see any radical or drastic changes.”
ecunningham@gazette.net
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