With the jobless rate continuing to rise in this country, it is remarkable there are pockets of economic boom. Just in my hometown of Mobile, AL, employers are holding job fairs, taking out full page advertisements in the classifieds, and have "help wanted" signs everywhere in this town. In fact, if one employer finds an applicant not qualifying for a particular position, he or she is immediately referred to another potential employer who might be able to hire the applicant. It is a case of a shrinking labor pool caused by retiring baby boomers (such as yours truly), cracking down on illegal immigrants, and possibly due to people leaving this area because of hurricane season. Whatever the cause, there are far more jobs available (both unskilled and skilled, blue collar and white collar) than potential employees. If you don't have a job in this city, it's because you don't want one or are retired (again, like yours truly).

Now, with the announcement ThyssenKrupp Steel USA, LLC has announced to build a new steel mill in Mobile County (and actually broke ground last November), this adds up to 30,000 temporary jobs and up to 2000 permanent jobs on an already strained labor pool in the Mobile area. Now, combine this with the announcement in Febuary of this year of the Air Force awarding a contract for 179 aerial tankers to Northrop Grumman Corp and Airbus parent EADS to be assembled in Mobile . Boeing has protested the awarding of this contract to the GAO. However, the GAO is expected to uphold the Air Force on this contract award. This contract is worth another 1500 permanent jobs and thousands and thousands of jobs for suppliers and service companies in the area. Total economic impact is not really known at this time. But, the total with ThyssenKrupp and the North Grumman Corps/EADS announcements, estimates of between 100,000 jobs are expected within a five year period. The majority of those will be temporary construction jobs. However, there are going to be plenty of high paying, high and low skilled jobs available.

If you are interested in applying for jobs with ThyssenKrupp right now, you can enter the appropriate information in the Indeed Job search box above. We expect the Air Force to prevail on this contract awarded to Grumman and EADS. Work on the plant here should begin shortly after the Boeing protest runs it's course in about a year.

I will keep an update on these two companies in the weeks and months ahead.