CLEVELAND – In a city struggling with declining population and high poverty and unemployment rates, a casino opening next year has offered a big jackpot: 1,600 jobs.
Statewide, four casinos will provide more than 6,000 jobs.
The Cleveland casino operator said Tuesday it received about 5,500 applications during the first week of online applications for 500 table game/poker dealer and supervisor jobs, including pitches from stay-at-home moms, factory workers and hotel-travel industry veterans.
People hoping to become a poker dealer at Horseshoe Casino Cleveland have until noon Sept. 30 to apply. At the first-week application rate, the casino could get more than 20,000 applicants. The positions are posted on the casino’s website www.horseshoecleveland.com
Shnicka Shuler, 23, of Youngstown, a Cleveland State University senior, said she might consider applying if her law school plans don’t work out. “If that was an option, I would take it,” she said in a campus interview.
She predicted that the casino pay scale would attract blue-collar Clevelanders trying to upgrade their livelihoods. “Dealer is higher on the scale than McDonald’s,” she said.
The casino said the online application process which began Sept. 7 had attracted a wide range of people, including professionals with experience in the hospitality industry, medical staff personnel, manufacturing workers and stay-at-home mothers ready to return to work.
“Resoundingly, the (hiring) team reports that there is a high level of talent and education from employed and currently unemployed applicants,” Cleveland casino spokeswoman Jennifer Kulczycki said in an email.
“Many applicants have cited during their phone screens that they want to get their foot in the door to work for this new company and industry in Cleveland.”
The casino expects to be the first of four opening in Ohio. The others will be located in Cincinnati, also operated by Rock Ohio Caesars, and Columbus and Toledo, both operated by Penn National Gaming.
Ohio voters approved casinos in 2009, in part on the promise of new jobs.
Cleveland’s most recent jobless rate, in July, was 10.6 percent and Ohio’s was 9 percent, with 529,000 people looking for work.
The fulltime Cleveland casino jobs as table game/poker dealers will pay about $17 to $22 hourly, plus benefits, according to the company website. Table game supervisors will start at about $40,000 a year, plus benefits.
Applicants must be at least 21, willing to attend six weeks of unpaid training beginning in December and have no felony convictions.
The casino hopes to open in March in a renovated downtown department store, with plans for a new casino to be constructed nearby, alongside the Cuyahoga River.
The Rock Ohio Caesars casino in Cincinnati will use a similar hiring schedule beginning late 2012 in preparation for a 2013 opening, Kulczycki said.
Penn National has online job postings for top management positions in Toledo and will hire 1,200 people by the opening next April, spokesman Bob Tenenbaum said. The Columbus casino will hire about 2,100 people, most next year, before it opens in late 2012, he said.
