Coal and natural gas were largely responsible for the men and women who came to Wyoming in recent years in search of work. Now many of those workers are in transition due to the recession, as well as a clear emergence of clean energy technologies.

"I got a call the other day from a dad who said his son was working on a gas rig and got laid off," said Mike Schmidt.

Schmidt is an instructor of wind energy technology at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne. He is hearing from more and more people who say energy is energy, and work is work. The recession has forced workers to focus on the essentials: know what skills are in demand, and acquire those skills.

"It makes sense to learn the wind energy trade here in Wyoming, because this is where the industry will experience major growth," Schmidt said.

This is the first full year of the wind technology program. Of 21 full-time students, 13 of them were from Wyoming, and five of them came to the program with advanced degrees in other vocations. One has a degree in music, and one holds a degree in philosophy.

"We think folks coming from different career fields are going to get a good, solid, hands-on knowledge of wind technology," said Doug Cook, LCCC program coordinator.

What was in demand for the past six years or more were laborers for the natural gas and coal-bed methane fields in Wyoming. At one point, drilling contractors pooled their resources with the McMurry Training Center in Casper with the goal of recruiting 5,000 new workers to the Rocky Mountain region to man the gas boom.

The program steadily churned out rig workers until last fall.

"We were so busy, we'd started classes in Dickinson, N.D., in addition to the classes here," said Bruce Brown, general manager of the McMurry Training Center.

Since the economy tanked last fall, more and more rigs have stacked in Wyoming. This winter, the training center made a shift to offer more welding courses. Brown said the center's commercial driver's license and heavy equipment operator classes quickly filled up this spring.

Brown said the center is constantly in communication with other work force development services in Casper and across the state to try to match training services to shifting needs. McMurry Training Center officials have even discussed coordinating a culinary program with Casper College.

"We are starting to see an increase in phone calls here, and drop-ins to see what kind of training we offer," Brown said.

Anecdotally, employers are saying workers who had been in oil and natural gas are gravitating toward construction, where there's still a fair amount of activity in Wyoming with roads, power plants and gas processing facilities.

David Bullard, senior economist at the Wyoming Department of Employment's research and planning division, said he and his staff are still poring over data to figure out exactly what Wyoming workers are doing in this time of recession.

"It is one thing to lose one's job when the national economy is growing, but it is quite another when the national unemployment rate is 8.9 percent and the cumulative U.S. job losses total 5.7 million," Bullard said.

One statistic that doesn't need much analysis is that nearly 20 percent of the people receiving Wyoming unemployment compensation live outside of the state.

"It appears that a significant portion of people who lose their jobs then leave the state," Bullard said. "The alternative explanation is that these individuals never moved to Wyoming in the first place, just commuted to jobs in Wyoming from their homes in other states."

Carole Shafer is director of professional technical and community education at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs. She said the college expected the recession would spur a massive shift of workers from one vocation to another.

So far, that�s not been the case.

"We really anticipated larger numbers coming in to shift careers altogether, and we really didn�t see that," Shafer said. "After talking to a few and asking why, they said they are just looking to do what they really want to do. There are some who want to work for the same company, just in a different position."

Workers are using this down time for professional development, such as certifications in computer and safety skills.

"In the event there's an opportunity on a mine site, they'll have that card in hand and a chance to say, "Here's one less thing you have to train me to do," Shafer said.

The college has also noticed a big increase in demand for technical classes that train workers to operate the instrumentation and computer processes for control room systems in the natural gas industry and electrical generation industry.

Shafer said one advantage of this refocus on training during the recession is that companies will have a deeper worker pool to draw from, meaning more access to skilled and experienced workers.

"The pools for jobs have gotten deeper, and not just with more people. But it's a more competitive work force. It has more depth to it - people with the skill and experience that employers are looking for," Shafer said.

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@trib.com. Check out Dustin's blog at tribtown.trib.com/DustinBleizeffer.

* Western Wyoming Community College, www.wwcc.wy.edu

* Laramie County Community College, www.lccc.cc.wy.us

* Sheridan College (Sheridan and Gillette campuses), www.sheridan.edu

* Casper College, www.caspercollege.edu

* McMurry Training Center, mcmurrytrainingcenter.com]]->