Amid rising unemployment in Clark County, the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council has been besieged by requests to help retrain workers and connect them with new jobs.

The nonprofit council, which serves as a funnel for federal money into local job placement and training programs, helped more than 700 people find jobs, more than 1,000 companies fill job openings and more than 400 youth gain work experience or training between June 2008 and June 2009, according to the SWWDC’s annual report released Tuesday.

SWWDC had a $6.2 million budget in 2008, funded mostly by the federal Workforce Investment Act. Of that amount, about $1.8 million went to fund WorkSource infrastructure and support services, including programs to help train and find employment for low-income adults and dislocated workers.

As of last June, the council had served 2,355 individuals in its low-income adult and dislocated worker program through WorkSource, with 784 landing jobs and 160 completing job training with formal credentials since the same time the previous year.

Those numbers represent a fraction of the population that comes through WorkSource centers, said Lisa Nisenfeld, executive director of SWWDC.

“We have to spend every dime as quickly and creatively as possible, the need outstrips the resource availability so far,” said Nisenfeld. “We’re really having to turn somersaults to get it to work for our population.”

The program had also helped 1,051 companies look for candidates for 1,272 openings; 56 percent were successfully filled, according to the report.

Since then, the council’s budget has almost doubled, with $5 million coming from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The stimulus grants provided $2.2 million for a summer youth employment program, which served 735 kids with work this summer.

And $2.7 million funded job training and placement for 300 additional low-income adult and dislocated workers through local community colleges.

The money was sorely needed. With an estimated 30,000 residents off the job and looking for work in the county, WorkSource centers have seen a 300 percent increase in the number of job seekers looking for help over the past year, said Nisenfeld. Some $676,000 of the stimulus grant went to fund additional staffing at WorkSource.

Though the council and its partners have seen much higher demand for their resources as Clark County unemployment has climbed, at least some good has come of it, said Nisenfeld. The council has formed closer partnerships with Clark County’s colleges and is much more ready to take advantage of new funding opportunities when they come, she said.

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