Summer Resorts Hiring Heavily Among US Unemployed

HILARY RUSS

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) — Resorts and other summer businesses across the country are getting swamped with applications from out-of-work Americans, competing for jobs usually filled by young people and foreigners.

Six months ago, Ramon Villanueva was earning $50,000 a year at a Philadelphia company that rents out sound systems and video projectors. But he got laid off in the fall, and now he is making $8 an hour operating the amusement park game on the Seaside Heights boardwalk at the Jersey shore.

"I never really thought I'd be working here," Villanueva, a 22-year-old with a wife and two children, said Thursday. "I thought I'd be a customer here."

All over the country, as unemployment rises, U.S. workers like Villanueva are lowering their expectations.

"The demographics of this year's summer work force is going to change into more well-educated, semi-retired, people in crunches, people happy to be employed," said Patty Ceglio Bishoff, director of operations for CoolWorks.com, an online bulletin board that helps people find summer jobs in scenic areas.