The good news for job seekers attending the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce's Project C.A.P.E. job fair last week was there were many job openings for them to choose from.

The bad news for potential employers at the job fair was there were only a few dozen job seekers at the event.

Nearly 40 area employers and other organizations participated in the job fair Thursday afternoon at the Shawnee Community Center in Cape Girardeau's Shawnee Park.

That number roughly equaled the total number of attendees looking for jobs at the Project C.A.P.E. job fair. ("C.A.P.E." stands for "Connecting Area Partners for Employment.")

The event was intended to help people, especially the chronically unemployed, find work. It also included an expungement clinic offered through Legal Services of Southern Missouri to help some of the attendees remove certain criminal records and other negative items from their files to make them more "employable."

"We had more than 100 attendees come through the expungement clinic, but I think only about 30 or 40 of them also attended the job fair," said chamber vice president Kim Voelker, who coordinated the event.

She and some of the employers at the job fair said many positions are unfilled, in part, because many people lack a basic work ethic and prefer to live on COVID-19 stimulus payments, at least until they run out.

"A lot of employers are having a difficult time attracting and retaining qualified candidates," said Tiffany Caney, human resources business partner at Unilever in Sikeston, Missouri, as she waited for job seekers to stop by her table at the job fair.

Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce vice president Kim Voelker speaks with a group of local employers and agency representatives about the challenges they face hiring and retaining employees before the Project C.A.P.E. job fair Thursday at Shawnee Community Center in Cape Girardeau.Jay Wolz

Caney said her company has openings for about two dozen hand packers as well as machine operators and line mechanics.

"There's a big market for mechanics," she said.

Some companies at the job fair were offering employer-paid training and employer-paid health coverage not only for employees but also for their spouses and children, as well.

But most said they had fewer than 10 people stopping at their tables to talk or fill out a job application.

Megan Frank, owner of OnBoard, a human resources and employee recruitment agency in Cape Girardeau, was at the job fair to recruit potential employees for nearly a dozen positions at companies she represents.

"I have 11 job openings and fewer than 10 applications across the board for all of them combined," she said, adding that even when someone applies for a job these days, there's no guarantee they'll show up for an interview.

"They're not actively looking for work," Frank said. "They're not answering the phone when we call for job interviews, they're not showing up for in-person interviews and they're not showing up for work sometimes."

Some people, she said, have no incentive to work because they're making almost as much through pandemic-related government support.

"And they're not having to pay for gas to go to work every day, they're not having to pack a lunch or pay to eat lunch and they're not having to pay for childcare," Frank said.

Voelker said, despite the small turnout of job seekers, the chamber will likely schedule additional employment fairs, "because our goal is to bolster the workforce whenever possible."

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