If you don't have strict XML (i.e. no ending /location) tag why not just use regular expressions? This seems to work..

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

open (IN,"testxml.dat");
my @buf = <IN>;
close IN;

for (my $i=0; $i<=$#buf; $i++) {
  if ($buf[$i] =~ s/^\s*<jobnumber>(.*)<\/jobnumber>\s*$/$1/) {
    $buf[$i+1] =~ s/^\s*<location>\s*(.*)\s<location>\s*$/$1/; 
      # if your tags are really like this
    &process($buf[$i],$buf[$i+1]);
  }
}

sub process {
  my ($jobnumber,$location) = @_; 
  print "Found a job $jobnumber in $location.\n"; # do something
}
[download]

On a related note, I tried to lose the spaces inside the location tags and couldn't get this kind of regex to work, anyone?

$buf[$i+1] =~ s/^\s*<location>\s*(.?)\s*<location>\s*$/$1/;
  # \s?(.*)\s works though..
[download]

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