War is a boon for Md. jobs

[Barrett808]

War is a boon for Md. jobs
By Paul Adams
Sun Staff
Originally published December 5, 2004

Survey the skies over Iraq and you will find an armada of U.S. military jets carrying sensitive antennas and communications equipment built and tested in a low-profile industrial park in Baltimore's Park Heights.

Employment at Nurad Technologies Inc., housed in what was once a London Fog coat factory, has nearly doubled to 135 in the three years since the Bush administration launched a huge military buildup and went to war. Nurad and the rest of Maryland's military contractors have been on a hiring spree not seen since the Cold War.

As Nurad scrambled to recruit the engineers it needed to keep up with its swelling order book, it encountered a job market crowded with rivals offering signing bonuses and other enticements to lure workers with critical skills. Nurad had to resort to hiring recent college graduates for positions it had reserved for experienced mid-career professionals.

Nurad's experience is being echoed at dozens of defense companies statewide as the industry struggles to fill thousands of openings for engineers, scientists, computer experts and manufacturing workers.

Stressed personnel managers are resorting to unconventional recruitment and casting a wider net - offering current employees everything from cash to big-screen televisions to recruit their friends from other companies.

Salaries for sought-after skills are being pushed up - sometimes to six figures - and young graduates are fielding multiple offers. In the meantime, companies, leery of losing existing employees, are providing perks ranging from in-house massage to on-site dry cleaning.

"The defense sector is in the midst of the biggest surge in employment in a generation, and Maryland is a bigger beneficiary of that surge than almost any other state," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense industry analyst with the Lexington Institute, a military think tank in Arlington, Va.

(more)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.bz.defense05dec05,1,5244262.story?coll=bal-news-nation

[whistle]

1. What military industrial corporations are in Maryland....

...Dupont (napalm fame), who else?

[indigo]

2. Dupont is in DE (n/t)

[steely]

5. I'm sure there's a bunch around the beltway...

(beltway bandits?) or is that VA.? - Orbital Sciences and Lockheed Martin (Bethesda) come to mind as 2 places in MD.

[WMliberal]

3. it's called the Broken Window Fallacy

Down here in Hampton Roads, defense spending rules the day too.

It only appears to help the economy because winners are more easily identifiable than losers. Imagine what else we could have done with all that money.

[lcordero]

4. i don't know

I know that there has been a recent drive to get rid of the security clearance requirements...that leads me to believe that the person that wrote this article is lying and that H1Bs, rather than Americans, are being hired for these jobs.

[SujiwanKenobee]

6. Government contractors have been about the only industry doing well, but

I would say that Northern Virginia has way, way more companies in this field than Maryland. I don't see the clearance and security reqs going away any time soon and yes, companies have been cannabalizing each other for a long time. First I've heard of the perk issue though. That smacks of the bubble mentality of the 90's. Most new graduates are not going to be able to handle the level of expertise required for many of the top security jobs.

(Former econ dev person here)

[Barrett808]

7. War is good business -- invest your children n/t

[Cronus Protagonist]

8. Right there is the reason why Bush is so popular in Jesusland

They just ain't hurting now that their main cash cow is being fed - the military industrial complex.





http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13
Buttons for brainy people - educate your local freepers today!