Career paths often take detours

Every night Don Barnes sits down at the dinner table with his 9-year-old son David, but it's not a meal the two share; it's homework.

"He kind of giggles," says Don, 46, of Parkersburg. "He laughs that Dad now has homework, too."

No one in the family was laughing, however, when Barnes learned a few months ago that he was losing the only other job he'd held since starting out as a 17-year-old at Kroger. Barnes had been a laminator operator at International Converter for the past 16 years.

Barnes is quick to point out that he's not alone. Indeed, in the last six months alone, countless workers have lost their jobs through a series of hundreds of job losses, ranging from the single digits to more than 600 at the Century Aluminum plant in Jackson County, W.Va.

Not trusting the stability of the manufacturing field any longer, Barnes is opting for a new career in the medical field, as an occupational therapy assistant.

Enrollment at Washington State Community College is up this quarter, and many of the new students are laid-off workers looking for a new set of skills, college officials have said.

Among those programs seeing an increase in enrollment, health is one of the biggest, along with business, engineering, industrial and public service programs. Full-time enrollment for the winter quarter, which began in January, is up 3.8 percent.

At the Washington County Career Center, the health and industrial fields are filled with students, said Jim Siegfried, industrial training coordinator.

"There are a lot of folks in here that are dislocated workers and there's a lot of people that are working but want to get a better job," he said. "That's the majority of our students (in the adult technical training department)."

A lot of those students, he said, are entering into the industrial field.

"The manufacturing side is slow," Siegfried said. "They're not building any more chemical or metal plants, unless Solsil goes through, but they are building power plants."

While AEP and Allegheny aren't hiring at this point, Siegfried said as soon as the economy stabilizes, he expects older employees at the two plants to feel more comfortable retiring, thus opening up many positions.

Meanwhile, Marietta College officials said they see less mid-level workers entering their programs, since most of their students tend to be directly out of high school, but education, health care and engineering-related degrees have had the most success landing a position right after graduation.

"Ninety-two percent of our students are employed or are attending graduate programs," said Tom Perry, director of college relations. "It's been 100 percent placement now for many years in our petroleum engineering program."

The fields seen locally as the most stable, or at least most likely to land a job immediately, are also reflected in national statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Health care jobs account for four out of every 10 occupations projected to have the largest growth through 2016. The field also has two of the top 10 fastest-growing occupations through 2016, as projected by the federal statistics bureau in 2007.

Even when looking at the latest statistics, the education and health services field is the only one with job openings above 3 percent of the total number of those employed in the field.

It might be a lot of numbers, but what it all adds up to for Barnes is a trip back to school.

"You're told to pick a career. Like most people I thought I already did that, but when you look around there's nothing out there. When you look in the newspaper, every week there are plants closing," Barnes said. "So you have to ask yourself, 'Well, what am I going to do? What can I do?' Most people take the option of going right back to work just as soon as they can."

In fact, it was that tactic that Barnes first used. He applied for a job at PCI Industries Inc., in Mineral Wells, W.Va., and felt strongly about his chances of landing one - until the next Monday, when he learned the plant was closing its doors.

"That's what really opened my eyes right then and there," he said. "Because that told me it could happen anywhere to anybody. I said, 'I refuse to have the same conversation with my wife and my kid that I had last Christmas when I told them I lost my job.'"

Barnes' first approach was to look into a trade program, but he'd have to drive an hour to an hour-and-a-half to get to the school, plus he would still worry about getting laid off continually.

"So I thought, 'Where can I go that's hiring that's steady work?'" he said. "Here you have a choice of either being a nurse or a truck driver."

Barnes ruled out driving a big rig and wasn't too keen on being a nurse. But he called Camden Clark Memorial Hospital, one of Parkersburg's largest employers, and asked a recruiter what the hospital was looking for.

The recruiter said she was looking for registered nurses and therapists, then asked Barnes how long he could stand being unemployed. If he could survive a few years, she suggested Washington State Community College.

In January, he enrolled for his first quarter and is studying to be an occupational therapy assistant. Occupational therapy deals with strengthening upper body extremities and activities of daily living like getting dressed, brushing teeth and other things requiring fine motor skills.

For now, Barnes is living off his wife Julie's teaching salary and unemployment payments. When those run out, he'll dip into his 401(k).

"I'm not the only one who's lost his job and a lot of them are in worse financial shape than I am," he said. "They say they can't afford to go to school and I say how can you afford not to? If I have to pay for it, so what? Because at the end of the day, a couple of years from now, I'll be better off."

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