Finally, a wave of new jobs approaching

The expansion is slated to continue next year. "We are at the point that to sustain our growth, we need to hire some people," says Bob Marion, vice president of Human Resources.

Some of the hirees had actually been laid off in 1996 by Reynolds. "We've taken back almost everyone who was on layoff at this point," says Mr. Marion. "Now we're advertising, and with an unemployment rate of about 10 percent in the area, we're having no problem finding qualified people with a good attitude about work."

Another battered sector that's rehiring is the airline industry. United Airlines, despite its bankruptcy status, has hired 450 part-time workers in Denver, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Northwest Airlines says it will hire 200 workers for its reservation centers in Minnesota.

The improvement in the airline business has a wide ripple effect, from food suppliers to contractors who do maintenance. One of those beneficiaries is TIMCO, which stores and maintains commercial aircraft. The company performs major airframe work, basically stripping a plane down and checking for any problems.

"One of these checks can run into 30,000 man-hours of work," says Brian Sauer, vice president and general manager. The company, which has a facility in Goodyear, Ariz., currently employs about 445 people there, but by the end of the year anticipates a payroll of 600.

"We're hiring everyone from ground-service personnel and support staff to aircraft mechanics," says Mr. Sauer. "We're getting a lot of interest from people who were laid off."

Some new jobs reflect a growing business confidence. Take Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy Restaurants in Lubbock, Texas. It has decided this is a good time to expand from 13 restaurants to 16 by year's end - and to 22 by the end of 2004. Each new restaurant needs about 100 employees, from chefs to wait staff. "The majority shareholders believe in their concept and felt that if the economy has not bottomed out, at least it's close to bottom, so things can only get better over the next five years," says Bob Lin, chief operating officer.

Some employers are now trying to line up new workers because of the coming bulge in baby-boomer retirees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, for example, that there is a need for 35,000 automobile mechanics a year as many of the master mechanics pack up their tools and head for Florida. This has prompted Automotive Retailing Today, an industry group, to try to improve the image of someone who spends most of their day under the hood.

"The job is very computer-oriented," says Denise Patton-Pace, executive director of ART. "If you are efficient and smart and can keep several bays running at a time, you can probably make $50,000 to $100,000 or more a year."

Companies that are involved in outsourcing are also seeing opportunity. James Krouse of INPUT, a Reston, Va.-based market-research company, estimates state and local governments will be increasingly outsourcing their computer needs. Over the next five years, he projects a 17 percent compound growth for "managers, project consultants, just about the whole scope of IT."

This is certainly the experience at San Diego-based Kintera, which does computer work for nonprofit organizations. Over the past nine months, the 4-year-old company has added 40 employees, mostly in the San Diego area.

"We're hiring a lot of entry-level people just out of college," says Harry Gruber, the company's chief executive officer. "We're still looking for people with a non-profit and a sales background."

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