Officially Unemployed

Though I have not been working for the past 60 days at the request of my employer, August 7th was my last day of employment at Cessna Aircraft Company. Today I got three or four mailings from the Kansas Department of Labor outlining how employment benefits work and what I need to do to file a claim. I will be going to school this fall and it is not clear to me whether I will be eligible for benefits during that time. It seems kind of weird that, generally speaking, you can't earn unemployment benefits after being laid-off if you go back to school to re-train for another job (like I'm doing). One of the letters that I got made it very clear that I need to be seeking full-time work to receive benefits and I think from their perspective, schooling (even if for another job) keeps you from doing just that, at least if the school is during the day. We'll see how the state views my situation when I start back up with classes in a week.

In the meantime, Cessna may have hit bottom here in the past month or so. There are no new announced lay-offs at this time and engineers will be unaffected by the lay-offs on the 14th of this month. We'll see what happens when that day arrives but if no new announcements are made, then it will be the first time in about a year that the company will not be in a state of pending lay-offs. In fact, I've heard that in some engineering areas, it has become apparent that the company cut too deeply and that they are either trying to re-hire employees they laid off or are generally looking to fill some positions.

I don't know if my area is one of those that is trying to re-hire or not but I kind of doubt it. I certainly haven't been contacted to see if I would like to come back on. When the good times do return, my group will probably be in the same position it was for most of my time at Cessna: multiple open positions and having a hard time filling them. Cessna has difficulty hiring people for the job I had because the work is relatively specialized (compared to some of the other work for electrical engineers at the company) and it is hard for them to compete for talent.

Probably the biggest barrier to overcome in the labor market is one they have no control over: their location. Wichita, KS is not attractive to many graduates in electrical engineering when they could be working in a big city like Dallas or Chicago or more scenic places like California or Oregon. It would seem that to overcome this Cessna would want to offer something to entice people over; things like higher salaries, good benefits, etc. Unfortunately, in my experience, this doesn't seem to be the case. Many other companies offer higher salaries (though they may not be once cost-of-living is factored in), better benefits, and a better living location than Cessna can. In my move from Micron to Cessna, this was exactly my experience. I moved from wonderfully scenic Boise to the great, flat plains of Wichita, took a significant pay cut, ended up with three weeks less of vacation per year and higher health insurance costs. The only reason I accepted all these things was so that I could be with the woman who is now my wife; I think these material losses were worth it. There is no way I would have made this move, though, if it hadn't been for her.

I wish the best for Cessna, especially as my wife is still working there, but I fear they may have painted themselves into a corner. We'll see over the next year or so how things turn out for them.