A healthy economy is presenting local employers with a rather unique problem ­ where are the employees?

Available jobs abound in both the public and private sector, and with the unemployment rate at a 30-year low, it seems as though everyone already has a job.

Peachtree City's industrial corridor, with its mix of highly skilled and relatively unskilled labor needs, is in a constant race to find the best available workers.

"We need everything from hourly workers to Ph.D's," said Mark Bunker of Photocircuits, the city's largest employer with a work force of about 1,400.

Panasonic, one of the largest employers in Peachtree City with nearly 1,000 employees, recently reopened an old building after getting a contract to assemble stereos for General Motors vehicles. The company has been looking for employees for this operation for a couple of months, and a job fair recently attracted 238 people.

But that's a far cry from the 1,000 or so who attended Panasonic's last job fair a couple of years ago. Although already in operation to some extent, the new GM assembly line still needs about half of its 100 targeted workers.

Close to 90 jobs, such as assembly line and machine operators, are available at Panasonic at any given time, according to a technical recruiter.

The company is trying to start cooperative programs with local technical schools to find employees, but with little success so far. "Everyone is working," the recruiter said.

The crunch being felt by local industry is also apparent in the search for city employees, according to Peachtree City personnel manager Brenda Rogers.

"We have them all filled once in a while, but just for a short time," said Rogers. "With unemployment so low in this area, even with entry-level positions, it's difficult to get people to come to work."

Aware of the fact that private industry can often make more attractive offers to prospective employees as far as money is concerned, the city has enhanced its pay scale in recent years, Rogers said, as well as improving its benefit packages, which she says were already quite good. "But the [unemployed] people are just not there."

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the nation's overall unemployment rate for March was 4.2 percent ­ the lowest since 1970. High-skill and high-paying fields such as exist in Peachtree City are seeing a healthy growth in opportunities nationwide, with the addition of 21,000 jobs in engineering and management services and 10,000 jobs in computer services just last month.

Locally, the situation is even more pronounced. Georgia Department of Labor statistics for February show Peachtree City with a jobless rate of 2.5 percent out of a labor force of slightly more than 13,000. Among Georgia's 45 largest cities, only Alpharetta has a lower unemployment rate.

Nationally, even unskilled and uneducated workers are finding unprecedented success in the job market, according to the Labor Department report, which said that the unemployment rate for high school dropouts fell to 6.1 percent in March, a little more than half of what it was in early 1993.

Probably 10 or 12 positions are currently open in city services, Rogers said, but that number will increase as summer arrives. Such seasonal responsibilities as mowing grass make the task of filling all city jobs that much harder.

The number of availabilities is not due to a rash of terminations or defections of current employees, according to Rogers. It's just growth, which makes it necessary to increase the number of positions, often faster than the supply of workers.

The Peachtree City Police Department, with its unique need for specially trained personnel, has gone outside the area to recruit without even really intending to.

According to a police department spokesman, a number of officers have come here from across the country through word of mouth, due largely to the fact that Peachtree City's population is so diverse, and residents contact family members to inform them about the opportunities here.

"It gives it a good flavor, and it meets the demand of the public here," the spokesman said of the diversity. "It's kind of good to know that people from New York might get a policeman from New York policing their area."

New Mexico and Canada are two areas from which the department has found qualified police officers.

The city routinely uses its cable TV channel, newspaper and trade magazine advertising, and contacts at various colleges to try and find suitable employees in various departments.

"We're excited about industry in Peachtree City," said Rogers. "But we're all competing for the same people."

Temporary agencies feel the pinch. One has even closed its doors in the past six months.

A spokesman at Olsten Temporary Services said that the Peachtree City office, the only one the company had on the south side of Atlanta, was closed in October. Calls to the Peachtree City number have been forwarded to the firm's Northlake office, she said.