Posts Tagged ‘Iowans’

Danni McCoy (left) and Mary Lichtenberg, both of Omaha, walk along the street in Amana recently. During tough economic times, attractions like the Amana Colonies are one option for a destination that is closer to home./Photo by Liz Martin, The Gazette

By Carla Keppler
The Gazette
 
Iowans may be strapped for cash, but plans to travel are still on summertime agendas.  Rather than cut warm-weather trips, many Eastern Iowans are compromising with close-to-home trips on a tighter budget.

Take Sherri Clemence, 42, of Iowa City. Instead of an annual weeklong fishing trip to Gordon, Wis., Clemence will break summer ventures into weekend trips.

The Clemences are planning a trip to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. They also want to visit the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and on another weekend, she hopes, take a day trip to Dubuque’s National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.

“We figured now if we do just a couple weekend things, it might not hurt so bad” financially, says the first-grade teacher at Penn Elementary in North Liberty. “We’re going more for convenience and in the price range we can afford.”

The same goes for vacationers across the map, a recent Associated Press poll found. The study showed that 20 percent of Americans who plan summer excursions — a number that has dropped from 49 percent to 42 percent since 2005 — will stay closer to home because of economic worries.

Carrie Koelker, director of Eastern Iowa Tourism, says half of Iowans will travel at least 50 miles from their residences this summer, a number down slightly from past years. These trips, she says, can be especially enjoyable.
“There are a lot of tourism destinations in your own backyard,” Koelker said. “People are looking for value in price and in what they’re doing, and these are only a short drive away.”

Nancy Landess of the Iowa Tourism Office now focuses travel promotion on attractions in Iowa and surrounding states and offers gas cards and discounts as incentives for Iowans planning getaways this summer.

Another 23 percent of summer travelers, like Elizabeth Green, a 32-year-old University of Iowa student from Iowa City, are slashing costs by staying with family and friends rather than at hotels while on vacation, the poll showed.
Green and her husband will drive to California with their three daughters to visit family and will be penny-wise on their journey by dining in and skipping the shopping.

The Greens also travel locally when temperatures rise, visiting local festivals, pools and museums and — like some 400,000 others — the Amana Colonies.

As one of the state’s tourism hot spots, the Amanas are the perfect “day-cation,” says Joni Brezina, who plans events for the national historical landmark, which welcomes about 750,000 visitors annually. Food, art, breweries and festivals attract tourists, she says, noting the modest price of the “one-tank” trip for Midwesterners.

“Sometimes you forget what’s right next to you,” she says.

Green says, however, that with frugality comes a loss in spontaneity.

“When we were in a better financial position we would just get in the car and drive … stop and buy a toothbrush and stay,” she says. “With the way things are, we do less of that … and don’t always get to go as far or stay the night.”
Others, like teacher Clemence, look forward to a relaxing summer regardless of the destination.

“Taking time just to sit and talk and just relax and have fun doing the things you don’t have time for throughout the year makes it worth it,” she says.

2009 Gazette Communications

By Dave DeWitte
The Gazette

Photo illustration by Jupiter Images

Iowans who seemed to be in some of the safest jobs before the recession are now facing some of the longest waits in limbo to find new employment.

Veteran workers who once held midlevel and management jobs constitute what some are calling “the new unemployed.” They are older, more experienced and better educated than the typical unemployed of the past.

“We are seeing people with more tenure in the workplace and a higher average age,” said Kim Johnson, executive director of continuing education at Kirkwood Community College, which provides services to job seekers.

The March unemployment rate for Americans 55 and older was 6.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was lower than any other age group, but the highest it has been in more than two decades. It also had climbed the fastest of any age group in the past year — 89.2 percent.

Veteran workers are less likely to be laid off in an economic downturn, but they also are likely to suffer the worst if they are laid off, said Peter Orazem, Iowa State University professor of labor economics.

Orazem said employees who’ve worked for the same company for a long time acquire skills specific to that company that make them more valuable to their own employers but not necessarily other ones.

“Your value to that firm is rising more rapidly than your value to anyone else,” Orazem said. “As a result, when you are laid off, it not only takes you longer to find another job, but you also get the largest reduction in pay.”

The academic term for this is “firm-specific human capital.”

At the end of 2008, 32 percent of job seekers 55 and older had been unemployed for at least 27 weeks, compared with only 23 percent of those age 25 to 53 and 18 percent of those younger than 25.

The Gazette interviewed six workplace veterans hunting for new jobs to learn about their frustrations, challenges and inspirations in a tough job market. These are their stories. 

Ed Saunders

Joy Nicholson

Eric Wolfe

Ed Wischmeyer

Phil Sutton

Rick Springsteen

© Gazette Communications 2009