Nancy Snider is proud of her talent for bouncing back and shifting careers, but, at age 60, even she's worried about her job prospects.

"I've always seemed to excel in whatever I did and ended up in management positions," said Snider, who was laid off from her job as a telemarketing manager in October. "I've never panicked before and I've always been entrepreneurial. But this is scary. I'm very concerned."

Hawai'i's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate jumped from 2.9 percent in November 2007 to 4.9 percent this November, a nine-year high.

And, for the first six months of last year, older workers — those 45 and up — made up 47 percent of all people filing unemployment claims in the Islands.

The outlook for when — or if — they finally do find work isn't bright.

"One of the biggest problems more experienced workers will face is lower salaries," said Beth Busch, who, as the president of Success Advertising Hawai'i, puts on the state's largest job fairs. "With more workers in the candidate pool, it will be easier to find someone who is willing to do a job for less money. So someone laid off may find they'll have to settle for less compensation in order to obtain another position."

Busch recently advertised a job for an office manager and received more than 200 applications, including resumes from as far away as India.

Since March, the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations has been working to retool its workforce training programs away from high school students and young adults to focus on an older clientele.

"We do understand that the workplace is changing," said labor director Darwin Ching. "We are developing programs for the older generation."

The department's Incumbent Worker Training Initiative now is focusing on better preparing older workers for the current job market, such as providing computer training they might lack.

"Let's say tourism isn't quite what it was — you need a whole new set of skills," said labor department spokesman Ryan Markham. "The previous approach was to focus on developing the younger workforce. Now we're shifting to adults and older workers to get them re-employed."

'VERY, VERY STRESSFUL'

Leda Tupinio discovered how job skills have changed when she was laid off as a revenue manager at Outrigger Hotels & Resorts in July.

At 53, "I hadn't had the privilege and the opportunity to go through unemployment," she said. "It's an eye-opener."

Tupinio has taken workforce development classes in Waipahu, where she lives, and finds some solace in the fact that she's not alone in the classes.

"It is some comfort," she said. "But it's very, very stressful. When you work for so many years, you think everything's going to be OK, but it's not."

As a single mother of a 19-year-old son with special needs, Tupinio needed to find a job. She finally landed a holiday position unloading cargo shipping containers for half of her old salary as a manager.

"It's really, really scary," Tupinio said. "I've never had a problem getting a job, ever."

Tupinio has been asked to only two interviews since she was laid off and both times was asked, "You have a lot of experience, don't you think you're going to be bored? Are you sure this is something you want to do?"

Stephanie Silva, a 54-year-old widow with two adult sons, liked the life she built for herself after 34 years of office management positions.

She had been making $70,000 per year, which was enough to pay the mortgage on a four-bedroom, single-family house in Wai'anae and make payments on a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a 2001 Ford Ranger truck.

Then, in September, Silva was suddenly laid off from her administrative and accounting position at a construction company.

"It was like a whole ball of misery fell on my shoulders," Silva said. "I know for a fact that I can't ask for $70,000 in this economy but I'm being threatened with repossession. If I wasn't as strong as I am, I'd probably commit suicide. The holiday season is here and it's supposed to be a time of joy and cheer and giving and loving. But it's hard to feel that way."

She's grateful that her live-in boyfriend still has his job as a warehouse manager. But Silva didn't want an extravagant Christmas present from him because she couldn't reciprocate.

VALUE OF EXPERIENCE

At 50, Jim Risser has a master's degree in education from the University of Hawai'i, with a speciality in early childhood education. But Risser said he was only offered a job with the state Department of Education teaching middle school or high school students at a salary of $30,000.

So he started his own business, selling novelty items at the Aloha Stadium swap meet until he sold the operation last year at the start of the economic downturn.

With a $1,450 per month mortgage on a three-bedroom Makakilo townhouse, "I'm looking for anything just to make money," Risser said. "I even applied for a job in Iraq. It comes with danger pay. I'm getting close to being desperate."

Bruce Bottorff, associate state director of AARP, believes older workers offer value to the workplace that's not fully appreciated.

"The prospect of all that talent walking out the door is something companies have not yet fully prepared for," Bottorff said. "There will be a need to keep the trained, experienced, professionals on the job."

AARP commissioned a national study that found that older workers are actually more cost-effective because of their work ethic and skills compared to the cost of training younger employees, Bottorff said.

Snider hopes someone soon recognizes her value as an employee. She has been a manager in the retail, travel, mortgage and telemarketing industries and worries about keeping up with the payments on her one-bedroom condo in Mo'ili'ili.

She was laid off in October and then her mother died on the Mainland on Nov. 2. When Snider returned home from mourning her mother's death, her 2002 Hyundai Accent required three weeks worth of repairs that cost $600.

Still, Snider's doing her best to remain optimistic.

"What was it John Lennon said? 'Life is what happens when you're making other plans,' " she said. "All I can do is move forward."