Want a job? Try nursing, high-tech

So maybe there isn't work at the post office.

But in this plummeting economy, with jobs disappearing across the country at a rate of almost half a million a month, there are still employers in Washington state looking for people — at all different skill levels and pay grades.

WorkSource, the statewide employment database, lists nearly 15,000 jobs on its Web site: from a retail supervisor at Goodwill, a coffee bar barista at the Hyatt to several positions Microsoft posted in the days after it announced major layoffs.

Many job openings are in the health-care and high-tech industries — registered nurses and pharmacists, software engineers and programmers.

But other industries are hiring, too — from wireless companies and retailers to the federal government.

Amazon.com lists nearly 350 positions nationwide, most of them in Seattle. T-Mobile has more than 1,800 openings nationwide, and Whole Foods, 800.

"There are actually many industries still hiring," said Matt Youngquist, a Bellevue career coach experiencing a surge in business these days. "There's just a lot more competition for the jobs."

Desiree Phair, a regional labor economist with the state Employment Security Department, pointed out that "even companies that are laying off are also hiring."

"Jobs are always being created," Phair said.

The nation's unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in December, while joblessness in Washington state hit a three-decade high of 7.1 percent, with 251,700 people out of work — 91,400 of them in Seattle.

And the new year has brought even more bad news. In the last month, U.S. employers have announced plans to lay off tens of thousands of additional workers — 20,000 at Caterpillar; 10,000 at Boeing. Starbucks is letting 6,700 go, and Microsoft, 5,000.

The state's searchable employment database — gotoworksource.com — records the distress, with 900,000 hits in December, up more than 60 percent from a year earlier.

But calls to a random mix of employers in the Puget Sound area indicate that behind the avalanche of layoffs is a small stream of job openings in a cross-section of industries.

Every few days there's a job fair or "hiring event" taking place.

Experts say those searching for work should concentrate less on the sheer magnitude of layoffs and more on possibilities that still exist, sometimes even with the very employers who are laying off.

Employment Security's Phair said two major factors drive a company's hiring decisions: demand for its goods and services, and the need to replace staff lost through attrition.

"Hospitality and leisure industries tend to have higher attrition rates," she said. "Attrition rates for government jobs tend to be lower."

Looking for temps

Tamera Wachter, regional vice president for Robert Half International, said the temporary-employment agency's employer clients cut across a range of industries, and in this economy are using outside agencies to help supplement leaner staffs.

Tech hiring is still strong, she said. And despite widespread devastation in the financial and banking markets, there are opportunities there as well.

She pointed out that while the overall national unemployment in December was 7.2 percent, among workers with some college education it was far lower, at 3.7 percent. Unemployment for those with at least a bachelor's degree was 2 percent. Joblessness was as low or even lower for certain jobs in the financial-services market, like budget managers and credit clerks.

"Contrary to common perceptions, our clients continue to report challenges finding high-skilled accounting and finance professionals," Wachter said.

Jobbernaut, which puts on the Greater Seattle Job Fair four times a year, said more than 30 employers have signed up for its event Wednesday at Qwest Field — employers like AT&T, Princess Cruises, Lowe's, UPS, Wells Fargo.

And they are hiring — some only a few people, but others, like the federal government, need hundreds.

Sean Paul, who sells space for the fair, said nearly 4,000 job-seekers attended the event in October, so "you can only imagine what this one will be like."

Kevin Lobenberg, account executive with National Career Fair, which is running a series of job fairs in Bellevue and Tacoma over the next few months, said many openings are in sales, financial services and insurance.

"Sales is big: Mary Kay, Avon ... those are booming right now," he said.

Demand in health care

In this weak job market, there's probably no employment sector that has remained as strong as health care.

Hospitals and other providers always need clinical staff, particularly in areas of nursing, pharmacy and physical therapy, where worker shortages have been persistent.

"The health-care industry continues to hire because of growing demand for their services and a shortage of trained staff to perform the tasks," Phair said.

"The majority of the positions are for trained professionals. So if job-seekers are not already in those fields, it will take them a while there."

Tacoma-based MultiCare, which encompasses four major hospitals and other services, has seen overwhelming response to the 477 or so jobs it has available systemwide. "People who never before thought about health care are now applying," said Kim Gigglio, director for recruitment. "We're now hearing job-seekers say, 'We hear that health care is hiring, that it's a good place to be.' "

Gigglio said an increasing number of applicants are men, as well as people looking to health care as a second or third career.

"We've gone from trying to find the right person among a very few, to finding the right fit of candidates for jobs that may literally have hundreds of applicants," she said.

Public-sector openings

Other industries also are practically bulletproof.

The state Department of Corrections has dozens of job listings for all kinds of positions, from cooks and correctional officers to chaplains.

The same is true for the state Department of Employment Security, which needs 70 temporary, part-time workers in Seattle to process unemployment claims.

"We're countercyclical. Our staffing levels are tied to how many unemployment claims we're getting," spokesman Mark Varadian said. The department saw a record 90,000 new unemployment claims in December.

"Right now, we're hiring." he said. At the federal level, the government has nearly 900 active jobs listed in Washington, not including the hundreds of temporary, part-time positions the U.S. Census Bureau will need to fill in anticipation of the decennial count next year.

As of September 2008, the most recent month for which information was available, the federal government's job site — www.usajobs.gov — had 10 million résumés on file and was averaging 60,000 job searches an hour.

Mike Orienstein, spokesman for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said on any given day there are 25,000 to 30,000 live federal jobs across the country.

"Federal government agencies are likely to benefit from all the expertise being made available throughout the country due to these unfortunate private-sector layoffs," he said.

Software holding its own

And employment in the computer software industry continues to hold steady, or even grow, economists say.

"It's not as hot as it was a couple years ago ... They're not hiring 10,000 people, but they are still hiring," Phair said.

Seattle-based Avanade is a technology company that rose from the dust of the dot-com bust nine years ago. It has 50 job openings in the Seattle area for technical consultants, as well as for core staff in such areas as finance and human resources.

Based on projections for this year, the company expects to add about 400 more jobs across the U.S., said Melinda Starbird, senior director of recruiting.

In addition to accepting applications online, she said, Avanade, which is partly owned by Microsoft, is scouring the Washington Mutual layoff list to find professionals who lost their jobs in the recent failure of the Seattle-based savings and loan.

"We are seeing an increase in applications and in the number of people following up asking about applications," Starbird said. "That's new. Most of the time you don't see the follow-up."

One place that's not hiring? The Postal Service.

Despite its one-time reputation, the post office is no longer the place people turn to for work during hard times. Seattle spokesman Ernie Swanson said that, except for a short period around Christmas, the post office hasn't been doing much hiring.

And that's not likely to change. Just last week, the postmaster general told Congress that massive deficits could force the Postal Service to cut one day of mail delivery a week.

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com