Ivan Holzmeister, service manager at I-70 Truck Repair on north Vine, says he’s not surprised that Ellis County has had a mechanic position vacant for a year.
“I can believe it,” Holzmeister said. “We have nine mechanics here and we could probably hire a couple more.”
But for two months I-70 has advertised a mechanic vacancy, and had only one applicant. Vo-Tech graduates are choosing ag careers, he said.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 some years, and years ago when we had a vacancy we’d get so many applicants we’d get tired of interviewing,” he said.
Ellis County Public Works Director Bill Ring knows the problem.
“We are not getting people to apply and the few that do don’t have the qualifications or experience as a heavy duty equipment mechanic,” said Ring. “We work on graders, bulldozers, dump trucks, excavators, all that big yellow iron you see when we’re building a road.”
The county’s Public Works Department has three mechanic positions, along with one welder-mechanic and one shop foreman. The mechanic position has been vacant a year despite advertising, job fairs and working with the Hays Workforce Center, Ring said. Counties in the western and central parts of the state have lower unemployment and a tighter labor market in general because population growth is not as strong, said Tyler Tenbrink, senior labor economist in Topeka for the Kansas Department of Labor. Ellis County unemployment is notably lower, 2.7 percent for June, than the state of Kansas, at 3.6 percent, the latest figures available from the department.
“Mechanics are on our list of high demand occupations for the state,” Tenbrink said.
(Read more: News – The Hays Daily News)