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Report predicts need in several fields

State will have great demand for nurses, accountants by 2013

By Cami Joner
Published: February 10, 2010, 12:00am

If you’re thinking about a career change in Clark County, the state has a few ideas.

But you might not get hired until 2013.

Nurses, lab technicians and accountants topped the list of jobs expected to face future shortages in Washington, said a state report issued Tuesday. And by 2013, demand for those jobs could outstrip the supply of qualified candidates, despite today’s saturated job market and overflowing enrollment at private and state-run community colleges, vocational and professional skills programs, said the annual Skill Gap Report.

Issued by the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, the report may seem surprising, in light of the ongoing recession, said Dennis Kampe, director of the Clark County Skill Center, a vocational school for Southwest Washington high school students.

Clark County’s jobless rate hit 14.3 percent in December, the highest rate in Washington. Local job creation has failed to keep up with layoffs and unemployment that has continued to climb since late 2007.

That’s expected to change dramatically by 2012, Kampe said.

“We will be coming out of this recession and we will be in crisis,” he said.

That means students graduating in two years will have better job prospects than those graduating now.

But students should still make plans to support themselves while enrolled in college and retraining programs, said Lisa Nisenfeld, executive director of the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council.

“Just like anyone who comes out of college, we didn’t expect to get jobs right away. We had a plan to support ourselves waiting tables until we got the right job,” she said.

Job seekers should also expect Clark County’s future workforce shortages to differ from the statewide outlook.

“The Oregon economy affects our work force needs much more so than Washington as a whole,” Nisenfeld said.

For example, as a Portland-area suburb, Clark County’s housing market suffered more dramatically than in other parts of Washington. That could translate to fewer shortages of accounting positions here, she said.

“Office occupations in our region are still suffering somewhat from the construction decline. That’s just part of the difference between our region and the state as a whole,” Nisenfeld said.

But Clark County is no different from the rest of the state when it comes to an ongoing and impending shortage of nursing and other health care occupations. The serious, nationwide shortage stems from a local and national lack of licensed instructors and practicum sites, along with institutional demand, she said.

“As the population ages, the average person over the age of 65 uses four times the amount of health care, and nurses retire at a much younger age,” Nisenfeld said.

Retiring workers could also skew state projections of employment demand, said Scott Bailey, labor analyst with the Washington Employment Security Department.

“In some ways, this study may overstate” future openings, anticipated as part of the baby boom generation’s retirement wave. That may not happen as planned now, due to individual retirement and 401(k) accounts that plummeted during the financial meltdown, Bailey said.

“Now we don’t know when they will retire,” he said.

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