Job Ads

May 10, 2004 - Help Wanted Ads

They say that Santa Barbara is a great place to live – except for two things: the cost of housing and the scarcity of good jobs. Well, no one can argue about the cost of housing. And, we can’t really say whether they’re good or not, but jobs…we got jobs.

On Sunday the dedicated staff of edhat.com spent most of the day being nice to our mothers - calls, cards, flowers, dinner, we counted her silverware and the number of flowers in her backyard, we measured the noise of her coffee maker, and we timed the tea kettle to see how long it took to boil water – just typical things that make mom’s happy! But just when our moms were full of love and Mother’s Day cheer, we returned to the office to get some work done.

Our assignment was to count how many classified employment ads there were in this Sunday’s Santa Barbara News Press. Using nothing more than our pointing fingers, we tallied them all – from Accounting Manager to Yardman. KEYT is looking for a meteorologist. Goleta School District is looking for a bus driver. The U. S. Air Force is looking for nurses. And, there are coffee shop positions available at RoCo, Peet’s, Coffee Bean, and Java Station.

The UCSB bookstore is looking for an Emblematic Gift Buyer for the Emblematics Department. The dedicated staff is guessing that emblematics has something to do with logo-wear. We are also guessing that the “department” referred to in the ad is a department in the bookstore, not an academic one. But who knows, maybe one can get a PHD in Emblematics.

The category with the most ads was Professional (102 ads), a catchall that includes teachers, project managers, estheticians, and architects. Medical/Dental (57) and Skilled Labor (56) were other popular categories. There were only 3 ads for Art/Graphics employment.

Commission Junction (CJ) placed the most ads (11) on Sunday. Interestingly, CJ’s business is to help other business place ads – online adds, that is. CJ must be doing pretty well to want so many new people. The company, a dot.com started in Santa Barbara, was acquired last December by ValueClick, another dot.com started in Santa Barbara.

Overall, the dedicated staff counted 574 classified ads. Some ads advertised more than one job, so there were a total of 837 jobs advertised as available. That is roughly one job opening for every 150 people in the area who are the right age to work. But many of us have jobs … and there seem to be a lot of other people around here who don’t need ‘em.

Daily contest players were shamefully low in their predictions last Friday. 40% of people guessed a number less than 100. The contestant who came closest to predicting the number of ads in the paper was Yonkie, who guessed 583. And, if Yonkie sends us his/her resume and 3 references, we will send out some movie tickets, t-shirt, or coffee card.

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