Winnemucca plans worker recruitment

Business leaders in Winnemucca, uncertain how to find enough workers to meet their growing needs, are preparing to take their sales pitch on the road.

The state's economic development agency, however, wants them to slow down and undertake some deeper analysis before they set off on a road show to Boise, Salt Lake City and other regional labor markets.

The problem is this, says Bill Sims, a business and economic development specialist at the Small Business Development Center in Winnemucca:

Humboldt County, which includes Winnemucca, currently has fewer than 300 unemployed persons out of a labor force that numbers about 7,800.

But Carry-On Trailer Corp. is expected to begin hiring later this year for a plant that will employ at least 150 when it opens. A new Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Winnemucca will need about 150 additional employees. And the mines in Humboldt County continue to hire like crazy as gold prices stay high.

"The economy here has really turned itself around in the last 18 months," says Sims. "It's become obvious that housing and attracting workers are our biggest challenges."

So the Humboldt Development Authority plans a road show, complete with a video and polished brochures, to take its story to metropolitan areas where workers might hunger for good jobs and a small-town lifestyle.It's unlikely, Sims says, that a simple job fair in Winnemucca would meet the community's needs because potential new residents aren't likely to drive to the middle of Nevada for a job fair. Thus, the road show.

The shortage of workers is common across rural Nevada, says Tim Rubald, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development. But he says it's almost unheard-of for communities anywhere in the nation to launch recruitment efforts such as the one planned by Winnemucca.

At the same time that it's planning to recruit workers, Winnemucca like other towns across rural northern Nevada is trying to figure out where new workers would live.

About half a dozen homebuilders are at work in the Winnemucca area, Sims says, and they typically build a total of between 30 and 40 houses a year.

Because the new homes are essentially custom jobs, they're often priced beyond the reach of working families.

"It's hard for us to attract workers if we don't have housing for them," the economic development official says.

On the other hand, small homebuilders aren't willing to take on the risk of construction unless workers are in town and ready to commit to a purchase.

One possibility is purchase of 160 acres of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management adjacent to the city for development as workforce housing.

The cost of preparing an application to the BLM is about $35,000, and the state Commission on Economic Development agreed last month to pony up $15,000 of the cost.

The commission didn't agree, however, to a city request for $10,000 to help attract new workers to the area.

Instead, the commission suggested that Humboldt Development Authority work with Nevadaworks, the workforce development agency in northern Nevada.

Tom Fitzgerald, Nevadaworks' chief executive officer, says his agency can help Winnemucca officials collect and analyze data to fine-tune their search for new workers.

And Nevadaworks can help design training programs to meet the specific needs of the area's employers, Fitzgerald says.

That's fine and good, Sims says, but the challenge of getting workers to move to Winnemucca remains.

"There is a lot of assistance with training once you have a person standing in front of you," he says. "The problem is getting them here."