Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jennifer Gorce went from shipping fishing tackle in Denver to drawing blood from patients at a local hospital, taking refuge in one of the few U.S. industries still hiring amid the economic slowdown.

Gorce, 30, who landed work last month in a blood-analysis unit at Englewood, Colorado-based Centura Health, has advice for anyone out of work: “Try getting your foot in the door in the health-care industry. It’s a stable environment.”

Across the country, Americans have been finding jobs in recession-resistant industries even as the U.S. unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September. About a tenth of 150 main job groups tracked by the Labor Department showed year-over-year growth in the past three months.

Health-care and social-service companies hired 348,800 more workers, a 2.2 percent increase, in the year through September, according to U.S. data. The federal government excluding the post office added 94,900 employees for a gain of 4.7 percent during that period, while utilities hired 3,800 people, the motion-picture and sound-recording category added 2,700 employees and tourism transportation made 2,300 new hires.

By contrast, the U.S. economy lost 5.81 million nonfarm jobs, or 4.2 percent of the total, in those 12 months as a global recession sapped demand and a credit crisis raised companies’ borrowing costs. Manufacturers fired 1.58 million employees and 1.1 million dropped off construction payrolls.

Population Growth

Some employers have been able to add jobs because demand for their services rises with population growth and shifts in demographics, said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James Financial Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida. Defense hiring and stimulus spending also have bolstered federal jobs, he said.

“The government, like health care, gives some level of support during recessions,” Brown said.

Niche hiring by itself won’t lead to net U.S. job growth, said Raymond Stone, managing director of Stone & McCarthy Research in Skillman, New Jersey. The impetus will have to come from residential construction and manufacturing, he said.

Stone is watching temporary-job numbers for signs of a turn in payroll losses, because companies make short-term hires when they’re waiting to see if increased demand is sustainable.

“What we’re seeing here is not job gains yet,” Stone said. “We’re seeing stabilization in temporary employment, and I hope that means stabilization of overall employment, with a lag of about six months.”

U.S. Recession

The latest U.S. recession started in December 2007 and is “likely over,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said last month. Consistent monthly job growth didn’t return until about two years after the 2001 recession.

The unemployment rate will keep rising even after payrolls increase as more people gain confidence to start looking for work, said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York. He predicts the U.S. unemployment rate will peak in the first quarter at 10.2 percent.

“Layoffs are down; they’re not getting worse,” Basile said. “It feels like there is a turning point coming.”

Gorce was one of the U.S. workers who didn’t have to wait for the economy to turn. The former employee of Eagle Claw Fishing Tackle Co. found a job in housekeeping in September last year at Centura Health. She took courses on weekends to become a certified phlebotomist and was hired last month.

‘Room to Grow’

“I thought I was going to be doing that other career for the rest of my life,” Gorce said, referring to her 11 years working at Eagle Claw. “Now, I have so much more room to grow.”

The health-care industry has been a leader in job creation, with “a straight line of uninterrupted growth” since 1990, said Richard Cooper, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics in Philadelphia. Average health-care employment increased 58 percent from 1990 to 2008, more than double the 25 percent gain in total U.S. job creation, according to labor data.

All the main health-care sub-categories have increased in the past year. Hiring in ambulatory health care, which includes doctor offices and outpatient clinics, rose 3 percent. There were gains of 1.2 percent at hospitals, 2.2 percent in nursing and residential care, and 2.3 percent in social assistance.

The U.S. government has added jobs because of the stimulus program and increased financial bailout oversight duties at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve System, said Steven Cochrane, director of regional economics at Moody’s Economy.com. Defense spending to support conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan also has bolstered employment, he said.

Federal Hiring

The government hiring has a health-care component, with federal hospitals adding 8.4 percent more workers in the year through August, the most recent data cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Defense Department employment grew by 5.3 percent in the same period. The Department of Homeland Security’s headcount increased 7.1 percent in the year through September, and is set to grow by another 9,600 employees in the next 12 months, said spokesman Larry Orluskie.

The federal government will be hiring 273,000 workers in the next three years, according to Washington-based Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit group that encourages people to join the government. Of those jobs, a third will come in health and medicine or security and protection, according to the report, which was based on surveys of 35 federal agencies.

Short-Term Jobs

The government also plans to hire 1.4 million people for short-term jobs to conduct next year’s U.S. Census.

The hiring probably won’t be able to continue at the current pace once the federal government comes “face to face with the problem of the rising budget deficits,” Cochrane said. “The party may come to an end, but it’s hard to know exactly when.”

Projects for renewable energy, a highlight of President Barack Obama’s stimulus spending, may give employment at utilities an added boost, Cochrane said. Hiring at the companies, which often have a regulated rate of return on their investments, has risen every month from March 2007 through September, according to labor data.

Jamie Carothers found work in July as an office administrator at a start-up wind-energy farm in Pomeroy, Washington, after losing her job marketing women’s clothes for Sandpoint, Idaho-based retailer Coldwater Creek Inc. in December.

Bellevue, Washington-based Puget Sound Energy Inc., owned by Puget Holdings LLC, opened an office in the rural town of Pomeroy as part of a plan to build wind turbines that may supply electricity to as many as 300,000 homes.

Green Technology

The project brings “green technology right to an area which is in need of some economic generators,” Carothers, 58, said. “I really do consider myself fortunate.”

In California, where the jobless rate tops 12 percent, PG&E Corp., Edison International and utilities owned by Sempra Energy may create as many as 18,000 jobs after winning regulatory approval last month to spend $3.1 billion on energy-conservation programs in the next three years, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.

The U.S. film industry has added jobs after resolving a labor dispute with the Screen Actors Guild and has expanded away from Los Angeles because of state tax incentives to encourage local production.

The movie industry in Michigan provided opportunity for Dan Phillips, who took a Chrysler Group LLC buyout for his job of warehousing car parts in May 2007. Last year he formed his own venture as a film makeup artist and two months ago hired his first employee as the local movie industry benefited since last year from tax breaks of as much as 42 percent.

‘I Got Lucky’

“I got lucky that Michigan started offering the film incentives when they did,” said Phillips, 40.

Tourism companies offering domestic alternatives to high- priced foreign holidays are also adding jobs. Employment in the Labor Department’s scenic and sightseeing transportation category increased for a third straight month in September.

Platypus Tours, which guides wine aficionados through California’s Napa and Sonoma vineyards, has hired five people this year, bringing the workforce to 22, said Don Rickard, who started his wine-tour business five years ago during better economic times. He’s had an increase in U.S. visitors and more people from Canada, the U.K. and Australia, who have all seen their currencies rise against the U.S. dollar in 2009.

“We are having a strong year,” Rickard said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Black in Monterrey at tblack@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 19, 2009 00:01 EDT