Regional economists who monitor the Inland Northwest job market say landing positions amid lingering high unemployment has become more about marketable skills that transfer into higher-demand jobs than about the academic degree you might hold.

While having a bachelor's or master's degree certainly helps, observers say people today have a higher degree of success selling a specific skills set, such as a mix of advanced computer knowledge with financial experience. Even better are technical skills applied to faster-growing jobs in accounting, health care, research and development, or toward work never imagined while attaining diplomas.

Spokane County has 3,500 people currently unemployed who hold a bachelor's degree and above, including those with a master's or doctorates. This group represents 16 percent of about 22,000 total unemployed in the county.

"It's not so much a degree focus as it's a skills focus right now," says Doug Tweedy, Spokane-based regional economist for the Washington state Employment Security Department. "Now you need that skill or that certificate or that license."

Terri Echegoyen, a 47-year-old 2011 Whitworth University MBA graduate, is doing just that—focusing on building and applying some new skills in a recently landed job that requires some technical, advanced computer, and project management talents.

Through the Spokane Valley office of contract employer Volt Workforce Solutions, Echegoyen started a position three months ago as a project coordinator in the enterprise technology department of Avista Corp. after an extensive job search.

"I'm developing a training program for a particular piece of software," Echegoyen says, adding that her combination of skills from a bachelor's degree in education, 17 years of administrative experience, and her recent MBA constitute the right fit. "We're talking about a very tight job qualification, and my particular skills just happened to match that job requirement."

She adds, "My contract with Volt is long term, which doesn't mean that my position with Avista is necessarily long term. I find that very appealing because it's almost like it is not a career that I'm looking for; it's experience that expands my skills set. Sure, I'd like a long-term career, but I don't have to have that right now."

People who have built up technical skills and can do multiple tasks are generally faring better in this current job market, says Grant Forsyth, Avista Corp. chief economist, who tracks regional information for economic forecasts in Avista's three-state service territory. He recently joined Avista after more than a decade as a researcher and economics professor at Eastern Washington University.

"In terms of people with advanced degrees, it's still the case the higher your education level, the lower your unemployment rate," Forsyth adds, "but there is a big variation based on what you majored in, what is your area of expertise."

He says, "Generally speaking, people who have technical skills such as in engineering, science, health care, computer science, and to some extent degrees where you have quantitative skills for financial, etc., are faring better."

Ken Vernon, a 51-year-old North Side resident, says that after a year of unemployment, he is considering retooling his skills and perhaps seeking a new certification. He has a bachelor's degree in advertising and marketing, and more than 20 years of sales management experience, once responsible for a regional business unit that generated $50 million in revenues.

Often, he says, he'll find that he has the experience sought in a job requirement, but then it will call for a specific skill such as knowledge of customer relationship management (CRM) computer software.

"The companies I worked for didn't have that specific software, but I tracked customers," Vernon says. "If you're going to be successful, you're going to track what's successful with customers. I had other systems that I used; it just wasn't called CRM."

He says another challenge is companies requiring sales experience specific to an industry, such as pharmaceuticals. However, he recently qualified to seek employment under the federally-funded On-the-Job Training program through the U.S. Department of Labor. Through that program, an employer is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of a new employee's salary, typically for six weeks as a person gets needed training.

Meanwhile, Vernon says he also is using other approaches in an effort to improve his employment prospects. He has signed up to take online computer courses through WorkSource, and he's sought help from a free employment service in the Spokane Valley offered through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "And I'm not LDS," he says, adding that a former coworker went there and has since found employment. "They don't push religion; they help."

He adds, "It's been challenging, but I firmly believe in my ability."

Forsyth says another factor that's been more the case in the past four years is how employers are viewing their workforce and whether they really need to rehire, he says.

"What employers have told me is the new HR model is finding employees they can assign to do multiple tasks," Forsyth says. "There's a lot more interest in finding employees who are cross-trained or who can be cross-trained. That means that they need employees who have a good skills set, quantitative skills in reading, computer skills, accounting skills."

He defines quantitative skills for many businesses as pertaining to people who can study and understand spreadsheets and data—to solve a production problem, do customer analysis, or forecast results. This has come up as a result of the Great Recession, he says. Essentially, many employers are looking for ways to make due with fewer people, given weaker demand for products or services.

"These firms in the private sector and to a certain extent in the public sector, with the big recession, they had to lay off so many people," Forsyth says. "They have an interest in not having to go through that again."

The recession has allowed employers to become pickier, says Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and human resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who has written a book being released soon titled, "Why Good People Can't Get Jobs." A May 31 Wall Street Journal column included observations from Cappelli about how job applicant screening software now is being used more frequently as the volume of applications swamp HR departments.

Since the recession hit in 2008, the Inland Northwest region has had its share of unemployment pain. Spokane, most of Eastern Washington, and North Idaho have lost jobs at a rate almost twice the national rate and well above the average rate for comparative chamber of commerce regions, according to a report prepared for a Greater Spokane Incorporated presentation.

In the May summary, retired Spokesman-Review executive Shaun O'L. Higgins, now a consultant, said job prospects here are expected to begin growing to replace the loss of 14,200 positions in the Inland Northwest since March 2008, albeit slowly.

Tweedy says that job-loss picture needs to be weighed against about 22,000 jobs gained in the Spokane area during the housing mortgage bubble, and when it burst, "we lost about 14,000 jobs."

A number of jobs also were lost over the recessionary years in lower-paying positions involved in leisure, hospitality, and retail trades, he adds.

"The good news is that the jobs that are increasing (now) are higher paying, if you have that job skills set," he says. "The four industries growing the fastest are health care, advanced manufacturing, finance and insurance, and the professional, scientific, technical."

Tweedy adds that the last category includes support positions in research and development, legal, and accounting. While people who earned degrees often learned comparable skills, they don't necessarily think of applying them to jobs outside their major, he says.

To assist people, the WorkSource Spokane job services center encourages people to watch occupations on a demand and decline list on its website. Employment specialists also refer people to www.onetonline.org created for the U.S. Department of Labor, to match skills to specific occupations.

"Matching is much more important, and transferable skills are the way to do that," Tweedy says.

The Community Colleges of Spokane says that it's percentage of students with a bachelor's degree or higher who are returning to community colleges here for a new degree or certificates has returned to a more normal level after peaking in 2009 and 2010.

About 19,000 people sought new degrees or certificates at the community colleges here during the 2011-12 academic year, and of that number, 520 of the students, or 2.8 percent, had a B.A. degree or higher.

That was down from 2.9 percent, 3.3 percent, 3.2 percent, and 3.1 percent over the four prior academic years.