As a student with Haverford College, James Judkins of JKJ Workforce, started in the mobile entertainment industry by running off with Circus Kirk in the summer of 1976. “In the two summers I traveled with the show I was a cook, fire eater, sideshow inside talker, sideshow outside talker, ringmaster and manager,” remembers Judkins. “I also learned how to drive a truck, arrow a show, lay out a lot and billpost.” In December of 1977 Judkins traveled to Hugo, Oklahoma where he joined Carson and Barnes, playing Circus with D.R. Miller and his family for 20 wonderful years. “My role became General Manager and during that time with Carson & Barnes I started working with the hiring and filing for visas and permits for Carson & Barnes Circus and then for other Circus Organizations,” says Judkins. In 1997, he left Carson & Barnes Circus and built Circus Chimera, which toured for 10 years.

As Circus Chimera traveled, Judkins was contacted by carnival companies with labor shortages and began using his experience with the visa process to assist carnivals in the filing of those visas for their mobile entertainment companies. “The business grew and by 2006 I formed a new corporation: JKJ Workforce Agency, Inc., closing the circus in 2007 to focus on assisting the Mobile Entertainment Industry,” says Judkins. “The biggest benefit of my business has been seeing how the partnership between our agency, the mobile entertainment industry, and the workers has helped make the industry more efficient and able to operate while at the same time providing economic stimulus to the workers, their families and their communities.”

As the company has grown, JKJ Workforce now assists a wide variety of companies, even beyond the mobile amusement industry. They specialize in many types of visas and work with several countries to provide labor solutions to employers and legal employment opportunities to hard working men and women from around the world who are seeking to better their economic situation for their families.

“We work with a wide swath of hotels, resorts, amusement parks, landscapers, factories, suppliers to the mobile entertainment industry as well as the mobile entertainment industry itself,” says Judkins.

JKJ Workforce can be found exhibiting at the Showmen's League Exhibitors Lounge in San Antonio (November 29-30) and at the IISF Trade Show in Gibsonton, February 15-18, 2022, or more information can be found on the company's web site.¦