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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cbs19.tv\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\nThe Jacksonville EDC’s annual job fair drew a large crowd as employers and job seekers connected amid continued workforce demand.<\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Texas \u2014 The Jacksonville Economic Development Corporation hosted its 10th annual job fair at Central Baptist Church on Aug. 25.<\/p>\n
Organizers said 80 people showed up within the first 15 minutes and expected this year\u2019s turnout to top last year\u2019s 220 people. Many employers present were giving job seekers a chance to talk directly with the people doing the hiring.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOur industrial park\u2019s filling up, so our business economy is really very, very solid,\u201d said Nathan Jones, vice chairman of the Jacksonville Economic Development Corporation. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen some new industries come from out of state and have new employers from Canada. So, we see the Texas business climate as being very positive, and we see several hundred new jobs being created in our area in the next several years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Parker was one of those people looking for a job.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be overqualified and still not get the job, and I’ve had that issue so many times,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Parker said she also dealt with personal struggles, making it much harder to get a job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, not just for me, I’m pretty sure everybody that’s here has had some kind of struggle in looking for a job or even gaining that job, not even looking for it,\u201d said Parker.<\/p>\n
Kelly Tamlin, a business development manager for Elwood Staffing, was there to help job seekers connect with employers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, there’s a big misnomer that people don’t want to work anymore. I mean, you can look around and see that’s absolutely not true,\u201d said Tamlin.<\/p>\n
She helps veterans, people who are aging out or people with criminal backgrounds who have turned their lives around.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I know that skilled trades are the number one thing that employers are looking for. We encourage all of the high school kids to pursue your trades. There’s great job security there,\u201d Tamlin said.<\/p>\n
New numbers from the Texas Workforce Commission show Cherokee County\u2019s unemployment rate has steadily grown in the last few months, but is still low compared to other East Texas Counties.<\/p>\n
Organizers say the growing turnout shows there are still people looking for a job\u2014 and employers looking for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jacksonville EDC’s annual job fair drew a large crowd as employers and job seekers connected amid continued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-381410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}