more white collar jobs
Brent Finnegan -- September 8th, 2006
The DNR is reporting that SI International in Harrisonburg recently picked up a government contract for the US Patent & Trademark Office. The contract should create 150 new “white-collar jobs” in the city. The workers will be filing and classifying grant applications: “SI will be the only company to provide classification, software and technology support in building a system to determine the appropriate classification for grant applications for the USPTO.” SII has dozens of locations all over the country.
Harrisonburg was recently in state news as one of three Virginia MSAs where the unemployment rate actually dropped. This will no doubt help continue the trend. No mention of what the starting pay for those jobs are. Anyone?
So, depending on what you think of local sprawl and traffic, this is good news for the burg (though I wouldn’t exactly say “it’s raining jobs”). But if you read other DNR articles like this one, you might come away thinking that things are looking a bit more dire, due to the influx of immigrants: “An increase in low-income, low-education immigrants raises a number of issues, including deterioration of wages and job displacement…” But immigrants generally aren’t prime candidates for data entry and filing jobs like SII. So are they really “stealing our jobs,” or is the DNR article slanted against immigrants?
-finnegan
That article was COMPLETELY one-sided. Here is an article from The New York Times Magazine that at least provides both sides: The Immigration Equation.
Thanks for the link, Adam.
That’s one long article.
The old gray lady believes comprehension is worth the price of your time spent reading really long articles. For an area that thinks an in-depth article is an appearance in eighty one, we lack such in-depthness. I would say that at times that’s a disadvantage.