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NEW YORK — Layoff announcements are piling up, and unemployment numbers are soaring. So, besides repo men, who’s hiring?

Despite the loss of 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, it still may be possible to find a new job — if you’re a nurse, a central banker or a natural gas pipeline worker.

"It’s a big economy; 350 million people — there’s always going to be people hiring," said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

In professions where there long have been labor shortages, such as pharmacists and nurses, qualified workers still can write their own tickets.

"You can’t say no one is hiring," said John Tirinzonie, Connecticut’s state labor economist. But, he added, "They’re hiring very specific types of people and they’re hiring a lot (fewer) numbers than they were."

Since the recession started a year ago, the number of unemployed people in the country has increased by 2.7 million. The unemployment rate, now at 6.7 percent, is expected to climb even higher in 2009.

In the face of that gloom, here are some questions and answers about who is hiring:

Which fields are hiring?

Even Friday’s dismal November jobs report had tiny positive glimmers in the form of fields that are doing a little bit of hiring — mostly in the low thousands, and nowhere near enough to offset the hundreds of thousands of job losses elsewhere.

Look to your "Monopoly" board for a couple of the industries that are hiring: railroads and utilities.

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Others are just as old school, such as the logging and mining sector, and food, drink and tobacco manufacturing. The oil business is still adding a few jobs, as is pipeline transportation online pay day loans. General merchandise stores also did some pre-holiday hiring.

The least surprising category that’s hiring is "monetary authorities — central bank," which added 200 jobs between October and November. The Federal Reserve has a lot on its plate.

Which industries generally don’t shrink when times are bad?

Health care and education tend to stay flat during bad times. That’s it.

This recession has sparked a surge in federal spending — so much so that the government hopes to add about 100,000 jobs this year, Van Horn said.

"This is somewhat due to retirements, somewhat because federal government is going to get a lot bigger," he said.

Are there specific jobs, even at companies laying people off, that will continue to be filled?

Yes. Van Horn’s program recently held a conference with panelists from companies that hire legions of engineers, including Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp.

"Every single one of them said, ‘In the last recession, we cut back too much, and when things picked up, we didn’t have the people to do the work,’" he said. "They’re still hiring because they need to stockpile people for the demand that eventually will return."

In the financial services sector, some hiring continues as companies lay off workers who make $350,000 and replace them with workers who make $75,000.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which cut 10 percent of its staff in the last few months, has been running select help-wanted ads for junior positions.

Are some states better off than others?

Yes. Even in industries that are shrinking nationally, the reality is rosier in some places than in others.

Connecticut, for instance, has seen its financial services work force shrink only slightly, despite widespread layoffs in New York, thanks to its more stable insurance base. The state’s construction industry also is holding up better than construction is nationally.

Similarly, Wyoming’s energy industry continues to hire.

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The European Central Bank, Britain and Sweden all made big cuts in interest rates on Thursday to shore up economies across Europe in the face of ever-bleaker financial news.

The cuts were applauded by many analysts but market reaction indicated that even more sweeping moves may be needed to halt the decline.

Sweden lopped off a record 175 basis points to 2.0 percent and the ECB slashed 75 points to 2.50 percent, the eurozone’s biggest ever cut.

The Bank of England chopped 100 basis points for an interest rate of 2.0 percent, the lowest level since 1951, as recession loomed over Britain.

France meanwhile unveiled a 26 billion euro ($32.9 billion) stimulus plan for its faltering economy as unemployment rose, the latest European country to open state coffers to fight the downturn.

With the United States, Europe and Japan now in recession and other countries sliding that way, data showed a mounting pattern of job losses and corporate woes across the globe.

The rate cuts are aimed at making credit cheaper and so boost spending, but banks will need to overcome their reluctance to lend for the measure to take hold and savers will suffer.

Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank said it expected rates to remain at the new 2.0 percent level over the coming year. There was an “unexpectedly rapid and clear deterioration in economic activity since October,” it said online cash advance.

The Bank of England, also taking rates to 2.0 percent, made clear the downturn had gathered pace and conditions in credit markets remained difficult.

“Across the UK, deteriorating house prices and rising unemployment are both taking their toll on business and consumer confidence,” said Trevor Williams, chief economist, Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets.

Analysts had widely expected the move following business indicators suggesting Britain’s economy could be heading for an even deeper recession than most people had predicted.

But it disappointed some investors who had begun to speculate on a bigger easing following Sweden’s action and European shares and bund futures pared Thursday’s earlier gains.

Most analysts had predicted a 50 basis point cut by the ECB, but with inflation plummeting and the economy of the 15-nation eurozone sinking deeper into recession, it opted for a bigger slice.

“They are now taking bolder decisions and this reflects a shift in perception in the ECB,” said Bank of America economist Gilles Moec.”

Nevertheless, European shares gave up gains to turn deeply negative, tracking U.S. index futures after a bearish update from chemicals group DuPont. 

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WASHINGTON, Mo. — Charlton Jones is hopeful and skeptical that beleaguered General Motors Corp. can deliver its plug-in electric hybrid, the Volt, in 2010.

The retired college professor is on an unofficial waiting list to buy the car. But he’s not depending on GM to kick the gasoline habit.

"If GM had been in charge in 1492, we’d still be waiting at the docks," he said.

The 68-year-old Jones is among four co-founders of the Gateway Electric Vehicle Club — a small but impassioned platoon of St. Louis area do-it-yourselfers hoping to jump-start the electric car movement in the Midwest.

The club formed in April at the encouragement of the national Electric Auto Association. The Gateway club is one of at least 50 in the United States.

Today, local membership is up to 29 and interest remains strong even though gasoline prices have tumbled to the lowest level in years. Most members of the group don’t own electric cars. Some have built their own or are in the process of doing so. Others drive Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid cars.

Jones bought a red 1974 Porsche 914 on eBay for $5,000 and spent another $19,000 transforming it to run on electrons instead of petroleum, though electric vehicles can be transformed for much less. The makeover took a year, and he did almost of the work himself.

In place of the Porsche’s rear engine is an electric motor, an inverter and half of the 18 8-volt batteries — the same kind used in golf carts. The rest of the batteries are under the hood. Inside, a voltmeter and ammeter line the windshield column on the driver’s side. Black marble paper covers the now useless gasoline gauge. The spark plugs are gone, along with 22 other unnecessary parts that Jones sold on eBay to help offset his costs. In case of emergencies, he keeps an extension cord in back instead of an empty gas canister.

The car’s nickname, Electro Cutie, is spelled out on the bottom of each door — the only hint at its new identity (Jones considered calling it Electro Cute, but thought it sent the wrong message). A sticker on the rear window confirms it: "Take this car and plug it."

Jones estimates his cost of running the car at 3 cents to 5 cents a mile, adding about $15 a month to his electric bill based on the relatively few miles he drives.

"It’s cheaper than paying to fill up once — by a long shot," he says. "And I don’t even get as greasy as I get at a gas station."

More important, "It brought back the fun of driving," Jones says.

To be sure, electric cars aren’t without limitations. They have less range than their gasoline counterparts. They can take hours to recharge and most of them don’t accelerate very fast free credit score. Jones estimates it takes him almost a minute to get to 60 mph in his Porsche.

But advocates say those limitations are easily overcome if the country is serious about reducing petroleum use.

Ron Erb of O’Fallon, Ill., another co-founder of the club, built an electric vehicle for the same reasons cited by Jones: To use less oil and help make the air cleaner. He and Jones say their cars serve as rolling exhibits that demonstrate to others that the project isn’t as intimidating as they might seem.

"I don’t know that we can wait for GM to come out with the Volt, but people can do what I did," Jones says.

Erb, a video editor, lives in a geodesic dome on the outskirts of O’Fallon that he built with his wife and friends in the 1980s, and he preaches the merits of gardening and energy efficiency on his website. It wasn’t until one week when his family watched "Who Killed the Electric Car" and Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth" that he was compelled to build his own electric vehicle.

After those movies, "My wife said, ‘My next car is going to be an electric car,’" recalls Erb. "’But where is it going to come from?’"

Erb was given a 1996 pickup by his sister and brother-in-law in Knoxville, Tenn., and converted it with his son Dylan, an engineering student at the University of Illinois.

"It was a great father-son adventure," Erb said.

The father-and-son team began work in June 2007 and got the truck running on New Year’s Eve. Dylan decided it would be running before the start of the new year, Erb said. "We were out there with flashlights."

The project cost $7,500, but Erb was able to offset that with a $4,000 state tax rebate available in Illinois. Missouri doesn’t offer tax rebates for electric cars.

Erb’s pickup also runs on 144 volts. It has 18 8-volt batteries — four under the hood and the rest under the bed.

Cruising along a roadway near Erb’s home, the pickup quietly accelerates to 55 mph with the ammeter on the left windshield column bouncing between 125 and 200 amps depending on whether he’s on flat ground or topping a hill.

The truck is used mostly by Erb’s wife for her six-mile commute to school. The couple also take it to town on errands. Erb says he’s driven the truck as far as 35 miles before recharging the batteries. That took seven hours but cost just 98 cents — a compromise he’s happy to live with.

Just in case he needs to pass someone on the highway, "It’ll go 80," he says, "but not very far."

jtomich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8320

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Stocks rallied in a shortened holiday session Friday, with the Dow and the S&P 500 ending higher for the fifth session in a row, capping one of Wall Street’s best weeks in months.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) rallied 1.2%, or 102 points, which brings the blue-chip average’s gains for the week to 785 points. For the month, however, the Dow has lost 489 points.

Friday’s advance marks the first time the Dow has held gains for 5 consecutive sessions since Nov. 17, 2007.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) index ended 1% higher and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) rose 0.2%.

The S&P 500 advanced 96 points in the week and is up about 30 points for the month. The tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 191 points this week but gained a total of 151 points in November.

U.S. markets were closed Thursday for Thanksgiving, and Friday’s session ended at 1 p.m. ET. Trading was light with many market participants on vacation.

Friday’s advance comes at the end one of the best weeks Wall Street has seen in months.

"The upward movement has to do with the latest installment of the government’s bailout plan," said Abigail Doolittle, a portfolio manager at Johnson Illington Advisors, which has nearly $700 million in assets under management.

Doolittle also pointed to the "psychological benefit" of President-elect Barack Obama’s nominations of key financial officials, which she said were "more conservative" than the market had anticipated.

The Dow surged nearly 400 points Monday, extending gains from the previous session, as investors cheered the government’s rescue of banking giant Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Obama named New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner as his choice for Treasury secretary.

Tuesday’s advance was less dramatic as dour economic reports vied with news that the government will provide roughly $800 billion to increase the availability of consumer and mortgage lending.

Stocks rallied across the board Wednesday after Obama said former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker will head his economic advisory board.

Looking ahead, weekly and monthly reports on the nation’s beleaguered labor market could pressure the market. And an initial reading on what is expected to be a weak holiday sales period could also push stocks lower.

"The market seems to have a very short memory," Doolittle said. This week’s gains could be forgotten if next week’s economic news reflects "the dire fundamental picture," she said need cash.

Black Friday: Investors are closely watching the retail sector as the nation goes into holiday-shopping mode. On "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, retailers are offering deep discounts to kick off what is traditionally the sector’s most profitable time of year.

However, consumers have drastically cut back on spending as unemployment continues rising, home values are plummeting and financial markets remain tumultuous. The trend is expected to continue through the holidays.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecast holiday sales to rise just 2.2% this year, which would make it the weakest sales gain in six years.

With consumer spending accounting for nearly two-thirds of the nation’s total economic activity, a weak holiday sales period could further the market’s perception that a prolonged recession is on the horizon.

Still, the market may find some support if Black Friday sales look like they could beat such low expectations, Doolittle said.

"Some people are feeling positive about the large flows of people into the malls, whether or not they’re buying anything," she said.

Other markets: In global trade, Asian markets rose as the crisis arising from the terrorist attacks in India entered their third day. Major indexes in Europe were mixed.

Prices for U.S. Treasurys rose. The benchmark 10-year note advanced 1-20/32 to 107-4/32 and its yield fell to 2.92% from 2.99% on Wednesday. The yield fell below 3% for the first time in history during the previous session.

Treasury prices and yields move in opposite direction and lower yields suggest that investors are less concerned with profits and more focused on safety.

The dollar gained versus the euro and the yen.

U.S. light crude oil for January delivery fell 1 cent to $54.43 a barrel.

COMEX gold for February delivery rose $7.17 to $819 an ounce.

Gasoline prices continued the fall to nearly four-year lows, with gas down 1.1 cents to a national average of $1.835 a gallon, according to a survey of credit-card swipes released Wednesday by motorist group AAA. Prices have been sliding for more than two months, losing almost $2 a gallon or 51%. 

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