Joomla Login LightBox powered by WowJoomla.com

The high school and college students working at Pack’s Hardware consider themselves lucky.

They say they have something a lot of their friends don’t: a job.

“A lot of my friends are looking for jobs. It sounds like it’s pretty tough out there,” Seth Metcalf said one day last week while assembling a barbecue grill inside the hardware store. The Smithville native will begin his junior year at Central College in Pella, Iowa, in the fall.

Co-workers Nathan Cockrill and Ashton Hiatt, who are both looking toward their senior year at Smithville High School, echoed Metcalf’s remarks.

“My friends are having a hard time finding a job. They keep trying, but they can’t get people to call them back,” Hiatt said.

This summer job theme is common throughout the area and nation. The reason? The economy, of course.

An increase in those out of work has translated to more competition and fewer jobs for the youngest jobseekers.

“We’ve had more older adults applying and just a lot more applicants in general,” Steve Main, manager at Pack’s, said. “And we don’t have any openings.”

Most of the high school and college students working at the hardware store have been employed for at least a year.

“We haven’t had much turnover at all,” Main said.

Berry Parks, owner of Big V Country Mart, said he’s seen less turnover than usual with his teen employees.

Typically, he said at least one-third of the teens who work at the grocery store during the school year leave in the summer for seasonal jobs. Not this year. A logical explanation for the lack of turnover at the grocery store is that the teens are having trouble landing those summer jobs, but Parks doesn’t know the exact reasons.

The lack of turnover among the younger employees at the grocery store has combined with an increase in applications from economy-stricken adults, Parks said. As a result, job opportunities at the store are hard to come by.

“With a lot of these adults, most of them are ones who probably never thought they’d be working in a grocery store sacking groceries and working as a cashier,” he said.

Metcalf, the Pack’s employee who attends college in Iowa, is thankful for his job. It allows him to afford car repairs and other college life essentials.

“A lot of my money goes to pizza and other things I like to have but don’t want to have to ask my parents to pay for,” he said.

Smithville Editor Nancy Hull Rigdon can be reached at 532-4444 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed