{"id":45420,"date":"2021-08-05T02:39:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T08:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmington-sees-rise-in-unemployment-rate\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:25:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:25:25","slug":"farmington-sees-rise-in-unemployment-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmington-sees-rise-in-unemployment-rate\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmington sees rise in unemployment rate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kyle
Kyle Rodeles, a lifeguard at Bisti Bay at Brookside Park in Farmington, keeps an eye on swimmers in the pool. The city is still looking for lifeguards to work this season. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

FARMINGTON \u2013 Restaurant, hospitality and retail industries in Farmington are struggling to find enough workers to fill shifts, much like businesses are across the country.<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in Farmington was steadily dropping each month beginning in January, with 11% unemployment and ending in May with 8.5% unemployment. As of July 30, that number rose to 9.9% \u2013 the highest it has been since February.<\/p>\n

Yet restaurants, hotels and retail businesses are finding their operations understaffed, said Jamie Church, Farmington Chamber of Commerce CEO, in an email to The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The city of Farmington has more than 40 job openings and has received more than 300 applicants, said Georgette Allen, spokeswoman for the city. And the San Juan County Detention Center is holding a job fair Thursday, in which job offers will be made on the spot to qualifying candidates.<\/p>\n

Tom Swenk, the city\u2019s human resource director, said the city had 43 job postings in June, some seeking to fill multiple positions, for a total of 77 positions. That was slightly more than in March 2020, pre-pandemic, when the city had 38 job postings with an unknown number of open positions.<\/p>\n

The city has filled a \u201clarge number\u201d of seasonal positions, said Christa Chapman, spokeswoman for parks and recreation, but several positions remain open for lifeguards.<\/p>\n

One of those seasonal positions was filled by lifeguard Kyle Rodeles, who also worked a few previous seasons with the exception of 2020. Rodeles moved to Farmington from the Philippines five years ago when he was 15. He said he followed his father\u2019s footsteps. Life guarding in Farmington was his father\u2019s first job in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been swimming for my whole life, cause I had to hunt fish when I was in the Philippines,\u201d Rodeles said.<\/p>\n

\"Kyle
Kyle Rodeles, a lifeguard at Bisti Bay at Brookside Park in Farmington, works the waterslide. The city is still looking for lifeguards to work this season. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

He said his favorite part about working at Bisti Bay is seeing the little kids having fun and the adrenaline rush from saving someone.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle kids bobbing to the deep side, and they\u2019re drowning and I go in and save them and their mom is like, \u2018They weren\u2019t drowning, they know how to swim,\u2019\u201d Rodeles said.<\/p>\n

\"Kyle
Kyle Rodeles, a lifeguard at Bisti Bay at Brookside Park in Farmington, walks the pool area. The city is still looking for lifeguards to work this season, despite filling positions at the career fair. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

On the hospitality side, Addie Betancourt, who is director of sales for Home2Suites on Browning Parkway, said parts of the hotel operation have also struggled to become fully staffed. Specifically, Betancourt said housekeeping, breakfast prep and the laundry department are \u201cphysically harder\u201d jobs and most difficult to staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are having a very difficult time bringing on new people and keeping them,\u201d Betancourt said. \u201cSo we might get five hired, three people show up, two make it a few weeks, one makes it two days, and then we\u2019re back to hiring five people again.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said what the hotel management staff members are hearing most from people who leave is that \u201cpeople haven\u2019t worked for so many months and they feel like it is too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the hotel has not increased pay recently to entice more hires, it did implement a raise to all of its employees during COVID-19 based on a \u201cwage comparison\u201d to other local businesses, not specifically hotels, but what Betancourt said provided excellent customer service and hospitality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that we are one of the highest-paying hotels in Farmington,\u201d Betancourt said.<\/p>\n

mmitchell@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite career fairs and lure of better-paying jobs, employers are scrambling to find help<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[799,28,443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-farmington","tag-headlines","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86490,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45420\/revisions\/86490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45420"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}