Outside the Spokane office of WorkSource these days, the parking lot is full of job seekers' cars, while inside the agency—which serves as the job-hunt assisting arm of the Washington state Employment Security Department—computer terminals are abuzz with activity.

"Boy, are we ever busy," says Mollie Patshkowski, a business solutions manager at the agency. Prior to April, the number of job orders WorkSource had received from employers seeking to hire its clients was about half what it had received in the previous year.

Meanwhile, the number of job seekers has surged, with the office currently serving about 200 job seekers a day, says Patshkowski.

The agency redoubled its efforts to connect with employers and find jobs for its client base, Patshkowksi says.

"We did a lot of cold-calling," she says.

The effort paid off in April. The number of work orders rose to 172 in April, up from 93 in March and almost on par with the 181 job orders it logged in April 2008. For the first three months of this year, the agency had a total of 229 job orders, while in the first three months of 2008, it received requests for workers from 447 employers.

WorkSource, located at 130 S. Arthur, a few blocks east of downtown, offers a number of services both to workers and employers, with the main goal of finding jobs for the unemployed. The agency, once known as the unemployment office, now focuses on finding jobs for people, rather than processing unemployment claims. In fact, no claims workers are there anymore. They were replaced more than a decade ago by a small row of cubicles near the front door where people can pick up a telephone handset to file claims by talking with claims people elsewhere, before moving on to the task at hand—how to get back to work.

Although WorkSource is part of the Employment Security Department, it also receives federal funding for its programs through the Spokane Area Workforce Development Council.

As of April, about 22,000 people were unemployed in the Spokane metropolitan area, significantly more than the 12,000 unemployed a year earlier, says Doug Tweedy, a labor economist at WorkSource. Some of that increase, however, is due to a surge in people moving here in search of work as job markets have dried up elsewhere, Tweedy says. That trend, though, seemed to peak in April, when the work force appeared to have plateaued.

"For the first time in 9 months we saw a slight decrease in that inmigration," Tweedy says.

About 60 percent of the Spokane area's unemployed receive unemployment benefits, and that state program requires recipients to seek employment actively while they receive benefits. On average, about 60 percent of those receiving benefits use WorkSource resources to help with their job searches, Tweedy says.

WorkSource offers its resources, however, to anyone who wishes to use them, Patshkowski says. It bills itself as a one-stop employment shop, where staff members trained to bring in job orders from employers for workers and those trained to help job seekers work on two sides of the same building. WorkSource's classes, seminars, and meet-the-employer networking sessions fill the top floor of the well-used building, while computer training and one-on-one job counseling take place on the main floor. It also uses the Internet extensively to offer services, and posts job listings and a resume bank on its Web site, at www.workspokane.org.

Job openings are on the rise now, having increased each month since February after declining late last year, Patshkowski says, but the number of new jobs remains down somewhat. Instead, more companies now are hiring replacement workers when people retire or leave for other jobs, rather than leaving those positions vacant, Tweedy says. He says there are small job decreases across all the industries here as businesses restructure and try to get leaner in the tough economy.

To help develop an employable labor pool here, WorkSource tracks employment trends and reports them in the form of "demand and decline" lists, Tweedy says. Industries that seem to be doing well right now in the Spokane area include plastic, rubber, and chemical manufacturers, including pharmaceutical companies, Tweedy says.

In most other areas of manufacturing, demand is down, Patshkowski says.

Though health care is still on the hot list for long-term projected job demand, Tweedy says he worries about the possibility of directing too much of the potential labor force into the health-care fields.

Right now the biggest growing employment area is in business services across all industries, Patshkowski says. She adds she anticipates that as baby boomers retire, demand will increase for replacement workers for their positions.

WorkSource uses the employment trend information it gathers to target its activities to help develop the workforce, offering services both for job seekers and employers. It seeks to develop relationships within the fields where it has a lot of people looking for work, or where it sees the potential to get people employed for the long term, Patshkowski says.

WorkSource functions as a free applicant-screening agency for employers that agree to let the agency post their job openings on its Web site and refer qualified candidates to them. That service is becoming more popular because companies are getting "100 resumes for positions now that they previously had gotten maybe 20 applications," Patshkowski says.

Larger companies that have their own human resources departments don't always need or want that service but still often post job openings on the WorkSource Web site, she says. WorkSource also offers space for employers to hold hiring events, as well as space where job seekers can apply for jobs at a certain company and where employers can conduct job interviews and orientations.

Also, employers can get financial incentives in the form of up to 50 percent reimbursement to train eligible job seekers on the job, which Patshkowski says can amount to between $1,000 and $3,000 for the employer. WorkSource offers to complete the paperwork for employers to collect the incentive from the Department of Labor under the Workforce Investment Act, she says.

It invites employers to "Meet the Employer" sessions at which they network with job seekers and with each other, and at those sessions periodically offers employers diversity training. At one recent session, representatives from Fairchild Air Force Base, Spokane Teachers Credit Union, Washington State University at Spokane, and Comcast were in attendance.

For job seekers, WorkSource offers a number of programs, including its new summer youth work program, for youths age 16 to 21. It launched that program recently, using federal dollars distributed through the Workforce Investment Act, and is operating it collaboratively with Career Path Services, Educational Service District 101, and Goodwill Industries. Through the program, WorkSource will pay the wages of youths who are hired by participating employers, who aren't required to retain the employees after the summer program ends. It's looking for about 400 disadvantaged youths, whose eligibility is determined by income and other predefined demographic criteria, to hire this summer.

The agency has a computer training room with several different self-paced software programs available and Internet access for its clients. It offers online career counseling, skills assessments, and access to a self-guided computer program called Keytrain, which assesses a job seeker's basic computer skills and helps him or her brush up on such skills. It also offers a computer program to help jobseekers format their resumes, and a free computer disk to save the file on. It currently has vouchers to pay for a number of self-paced online training courses for various Microsoft software programs. The online courses are offered by Microsoft for a fee to the general public. When WorkSource clients complete one training course, they can request a voucher for another, Patshkowski says. WorkSource also provides its clients with free copying and faxing services for job hunts.

It offers GED classes onsite for people who haven't earned a high-school diploma, and has contracts with Spokane Community Colleges and Goodwill Industries for further education and on-the-job training programs.

Though the agency focuses on people who are out of work or underemployed, its services are available to everyone, Patshkowski says. She says she believes a lot of people in Spokane could benefit from the agency's training programs.

"We have a lot of 30- to 40-year-olds who are underemployed," Patshkowski says. She says she'd like to see them take advantage of opportunities to become more highly skilled and improve their earning power.