moving to the scranton wilkes barre area please help (York: middle-class, to rent)

[qwana]

Hi. I am moving my family to the Scranton or wilkes barre area from Brooklyn NY. Any comments on the job market I mostly do customer service work. I am looking to rent a 3 or 4 bedroom house in an ok neighborhood which im sure would be better then brooklyn. Any suggestion or advice would be most welcome.

What are the schools like kids activity any suggestions I need help thanks

Any suggestions on whose hiring

Also are there any boys an girls clubs or after school programs like it where a 5 year old can attend

[Riverside4ever]

Sounds to me your jumping from the frying pan right into the fire .. There are No jobs out here .. If any they are low paying and most wont cover the cost of feeding a family never mind paying rent and gas for a car ,, Oh what about heating the home ... If you want to work customer service India is hiring .. Good luck with your search.. But I think you have a better chance in Brooklyn then here .. IMO

[bloominscranton]

The job market here is terrible!

[Mike_by_Cedar]

Job market isn't too hot as you can see, but if you're looking for "better than average for NEPA" wages for customer service work, check out TMG Healthcare in Dunmore or CIGNA Healthcare. They always seem to be hiring. Both are a stone's throw away from Scranton and pay more than $9.00 an hour.

[weluvpa]

Its going to take more than just above the $9 an hour to support a family here. There is NOTHING here. Jobs are tight. What do you mean by. "CUSTOMER SERVICE" positions because the call center at Cigna or TMG is not a retail counter position and can be very stressful and generally under paid for the work done.

UNLESS YOU HAVE A JOB AND PLACE LINED UP THAT YOU CAN AFFORD I WOULD ADVISE AGAINST THE MOVE.

Of course there will be those delusional fools that will tell you otherwise, but they seem to live in some fantasy land within NEPA...That nobody else can seem to find.

[2nd trick op]

I have to agree (reluctantly) with the general assessments above, but assuming you're commtted to the move, and/or have no real reason to stay in New York, there are still some opportunities, assuming you're flexible and not hung up on stable hours and/or security.

Temporary circumstances forced me to move back to the Bloomsburg/Berwick area last spring. I quickly found a call center job (Sykes) but the pay was only $9/hr with no prospect for either benefits of improvement for at least a year; there was little stress, but the supervisors were obsesssed with micro-management.

With that in mind, if you still want to get out of New York, I'd suggest starting out with a seasonal job in the Poconos. Be prepared to work overtime, or on short notice, and you can fall back on Unemployment when the season ends, or by that time, you might be able to network your way into something better. Best of luck!

[Dennis18708]

Pittston is cheap.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Dennis18708

Pittston is cheap.

Having grown up there it's also not a community I'd really recommend.

[Dennis18708]

I wouldn't either, but a 3 to 4 bedroom house on a customer service job there isn't really much more to recommend. I lived in a 3br house in Pittston for $600/mo and it wasn't falling down, so there's that...

[SteelCityRising]

For what it's worth the Pittston Area School District has also been steadily improving over the course of the past two decades. It now usually comes in just behind Crestwood, Dallas, and narrowly behind Wyoming Area in terms of overall academic performance in Luzerne County. I attribute this mostly to the changing demographics of the communities around the city proper of Pittston to becoming more upper-middle-class in nature than directly to a reformed educational system, though. However, the district's relatively new strict dress code may be viewed as a positive in that regard.

In regards to Pittston itself it had way too much property crime, "interesting"/shady characters, and derelict buildings for a town of just 7,000 for my personal tastes, and they've leveled too much of the Downtown for parking lots to ever capitalize upon heritage tourism the way places like Jim Thorpe, Lewisburg, or New Hope do. It also has a substantial drug problem.