Jobs Are There but Tough to Find : Employment: The market has tightened markedly in recent months, but accountants, nurses and bill collectors are still needed.

Americans scouring for work are finding that some jobs seem impervious to recession--the nation still needs accountants, plumbers, nurses and bill collectors. Still, the openings are tough to find and the competition is fiercer than ever.

“If you were good before, you have to be excellent today. You have to be doubly trained to get the same job as you did a year ago. The employers want twice (the employee) for the money,” said Ron De Sure of Job Direction Inc., a nationwide employment firm based in Fairlawn, Ohio, a suburb of Akron.

The job market has tightened markedly in recent months as the tumbling economy has forced employers to lay off workers or scale back hiring plans. Since October, nearly 1 million people have joined the ranks of the unemployed. Payroll cuts have hit nearly all sectors, from factories to department stores to construction sites.

Alan Sperling, for instance, found himself jobless after the firm that bought his Washington wholesale produce company let him go. The slowdown had forced him to sell.

“I had four interviews and dropped off 11 resumes yesterday. It was, ‘We’ll get back to you; we’ll get back to you.’ There’s just nothing out there,” said Sperling, 41, who was filling out unemployment claims for the first time.

“Things came to a screeching halt pretty much in November and December. It’s tough right now--people are either freezing (hiring) or laying off,” said Lisa Morgan of NRI Arrow Resources, a Washington placement and recruiting firm.

Even a mild recession could cost the nation another 1 million jobs in coming months, many analysts predict, meaning even steeper competition for fewer jobs.

Although the job losses have been broad-based, some fields still have work to offer, employment experts say.

Nurses, accountants and computer programmers are still in demand, according to help-wanted ads in newspapers in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Phoenix and Washington. Dental assistants, legal secretaries and auto mechanics are also on the most-sought list.

A smattering of other jobs is commonly listed too--from plumbers to custodians to civil engineers to truck drivers.

“There are jobs across the board; there just aren’t as many of them,” said Pat Southerland, president of Robert Half of Washington, a placement firm that specializes in financial personnel.

One area that is booming, largely because of the sour economy, is the collection business.

“Before, if you had outstanding bills, you might have let it slide an extra month or two. Now, businesses can’t afford to do that,” Morgan said.

Help-wanted ads in newspapers have thinned in recent months. The Los Angeles Times said employment linage in its classified section this month is off 40% from a year ago; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a 28% drop in its Jan. 6 edition from a comparable Sunday a year ago.

One secondary reason that employment ads may be down, job experts said, is that businesses are skipping the high-profile listings so they won’t be flooded with responses. One accounting firm received 500 applications for a job it listed recently in Washington, Southerland said.

“The good jobs are not on the street; they’re not showing up in the newspaper. The supply of people available greatly exceeds demand, and people just don’t want to be deluged with responses,” he said.

Job hunters instead should employ more networking--asking friends and associates for job tips and working the telephone, Southerland said.