Engineers and other highly skilled people might have a secret weapon—Y-12 is hiring.
Y-12, or more specifically BWXT Y-12, in Oak Ridge may be as familiar to East Tennesseans as Wal-Mart, yet its name is only a collection of consonants for many elsewhere in the state.
Best known for manufacturing the atomic bomb that ended World War II, Y-12 is what makes “The Secret City” (as Oak Ridge is sometimes called) so secret. BWXT Y-12 operates the Y-12 National Security Complex for the National Nuclear Security Administration. And for all its secrecy in the past, Y-12 is one of the more conspicuous sources of hiring in the Knoxville region. Today, the entire complex of 650 buildings is undergoing a $2 billion, 10-year facelift that includes replacing many of its corps of engineers and scientists who are approaching retirement age.
Part of the modernization means going from solely manufacturing nuclear weapons to running diagnostic tests and some refurbishing work on the weapons stockpiled in Oak Ridge.
With so many changes has come the need for new faces.
So far this year, the complex has added 62 employees including both college graduates and experienced professionals with “critical skills.” Of the 170 recent college grads who accepted positions at Y-12 in 2000, only 10 have left.
“The reason that we have that kind of [hiring success] is because, frankly, no- body else is hiring,” says Susan Alexander, manager, resource management at BWXT Y-12.
Y-12’s success story may explain, in part, why the Knoxville area’s unemployment rate is so low.
In March, the unemployment rate in Knox County was the lowest in the state at 2.6% com- pared to the nation’s 5.7% rate, according to the Tennessee Department of Labor and Work-force Management. The Knoxville metropolitan area, which includes Anderson, Blount, Knox, Loudon, Sevier and Union counties, also comes in under the nation at 3.9%.
Once outside the Knoxville area—and farther from Y-12—things get less rosy. The counties in northern East Tennessee, including Carter, Hawkins, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington, collectively had a higher unemployment rate of 5.4% in March.
Yet the highly skilled but unemployed can take solace in the potential hot spot for engineering and technology positions nearby in Oak Ridge, as can one of the nation’s few employers of such talent. “It helps,” says BWXT Y-12’s Alexander, “when it’s the CIA, the FBI, the Navy and you.”
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