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DC-Area Jobless Turning to Training Programs

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Mon May 04 2009

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(V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post Staff Writer) Karen Collins Henry, who lost her real estate job when the housing market began to collapse in 2007, says her applications for work in a variety of fields have been rejected or ignored, so she's given up looking. Last fall, she began taking computer graphics courses and is pinning her hopes on a career developing video games that help special needs students learn in the classroom.

Henry is among a growing number of unemployed people in the Washington region opting for job training, some using government funding and others getting tax credits, to reinvent themselves after an often drawn-out and fruitless search for work.

"It seems like the requirements have changed, the stakes are higher, there is a bigger pool of people" looking for work, said Henry, who is enrolled at Montgomery College and plans to transfer to the University of Baltimore.

"I'll have my education in a cool field," Henry, 46, of Damascus, said. "Hopefully, I'll be employable."

Training officials caution that there's little guarantee that a job will be waiting given the economic climate, even in the Washington area, where proximity to the federal government has largely shielded the region from the large-scale job losses seen in other parts of the nation.

(Read the entire article.)

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