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Employment agency will have free flags and food at Friday jobs event

How about this combination: “Food, Jobs and American Flags.”

Just as with most businesses and industries in the area, Clinton’s Express Employment Professionals is desperate to find temporary workers for its clients.

And to help facilitate that mission, the employment agency has begun its “Taking it to the Streets” recruitment drive to try to attract people to fill more than 700 open jobs for its clients.

The drive will kick off from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Friday, July 2, in front of Express Employment’s Clinton office at 1199 N. Charles G. Seivers Blvd., next door to Papa John’s Pizza, with free food and flags to everyone who stops in and fills out a job application.

“We’re giving away flags and hot dogs, and one application allows you to apply for more than 700 different jobs,” said Angie Myers, branch manager for the Clinton office.

“The state even has a mobile unit they will roll out with computers to help applicants with resume writing,” she said.

There will be prizes, too, Myers said. “Anyone who fills out an application gets to spin the wheel and win a prize.”

While “Taking it to the Streets” kicks off the month with the event at the company’s branch office, the recruitment effort will also be going on the road on the rest of the Fridays through July, including a stop in Norris on July 16, Myers said.

The push underway now coincides with the end of the $300-a-week federal unemployment bonus payments that Gov. Bill Lee decided to discontinue for Tennessee residents July 2.

Those extra federal payments have been widely blamed for keeping people on the unemployment rolls while businesses of all sizes struggle to operate because of a lack of sufficient staff.

Nearly half of the states have ended or will soon end the federal unemployment bonuses so people will be motivated to go back to work rather than relying on government payments that, in many cases, have exceeded what people could make if they had actual jobs.

The additional unemployment benefits were $600 a week during the early part of the pandemic, but were cut to $300 a week late last summer. The state pays $275 a week maximum.

The federal program was extended with the most-recent Democrat COVID-19 stimulus package passed after Joe Biden took office.