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The Springfield News-Sun provides in-depth coverage of jobs and the economy in Clark in Champaign counties, including monthly reports on unemployment rates in Ohio and expansion plans at Navistar.
Many Thirty-One Gifts employees will lose their jobs at the end of this week but the company hosted a job fair Wednesday to help them find new work.
Ohio Means Jobs and the Chamber of Greater Springfield hosted the hiring event at the Thirty-One Gifts plant, 1000 Titus Road.
Workers at the Springfield plant produced handbags, fashion accessories, totes and other products, and personalized them with monograms for customers.
The closing affects 74 employees as well as an undisclosed number of workers at subcontractor Exel Logistics. The plant will close for the majority of workers on Friday, a spokeswoman said. Managers will continue to work until March.
The company announced it would close the Springfield plant in October, citing consolidation to offices in Columbus.
It initially pledged to create as many as 500 jobs when it first opened the distribution center in Springfield in 2011, but most of those jobs never materialized.
The job fair Wednesday was open to Thirty-One Gifts employees for an hour before it became open to the general public.
“Our goal is really to get these workers immediately back to work,” said Amy Donohoe of the chamber of commerce. “There’s a lot of openings in the region and of course our goal is to keep them here.”
More than 30 companies came with the hopes of hiring local workers.
“That’s one of our No. 1 goals — to keep it local,” said Sherri Sanderson of Red Roof.
Some Thirty-One Gifts employees like Bethla Crawford were glad to have the chance to meet employers.
“I didn’t like the idea of being laid off at first,” Crawford said. “But now that we’ve got all this going on, it’s making me feel better.”
She worked at the plant for four years as a monogrammer and said she enjoyed it.
“I’m going to miss it,” she said. “Going to miss all my people.”
Unemployment rates in Clark and Champaign counties rose slightly at the end of 2015. November jobless figures from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services showed an uptick from 4.2 to 4.7 percent in Clark County and from 3.7 to 4.2 percent in Champaign County.
The region saw gains in industries like educational and health services but the manufacturing industry was among those that saw job losses.
Dustin Briggs, who recently moved back to Springfield to be close to family, said he made many good connections at the job fair.
“There’s companies here that really care and want to provide for their community,” he said.
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