MONTERREY, Calif. — Jennifer Gorce went from shipping fishing tackle in Denver to drawing blood from patients at a local hospital, taking refuge in one of the few U.S. industries still hiring amid the economic slowdown.

Gorce, 30, who landed work last month in a blood-analysis unit at Englewood, Colorado-based Centura Health, has advice for anyone out of work: "Try getting your foot in the door in the health care industry. It's a stable environment."

Across the country, Americans have been finding jobs in recession-resistant industries even as the U.S. unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September. About a tenth of 150 main job groups tracked by the Labor Department showed year-over-year growth in the past three months.

Health care and social-service companies hired 348,800 more workers, a 2.2 percent increase, in the year through September, according to U.S. data.

The federal government excluding the post office added 94,900 employees for a gain of 4.7 percent during that period, while utilities hired 3,800 people, the motion-picture and sound-recording category added 2,700 employees and tourism transportation made 2,300 new hires.

By contrast, the U.S. economy lost 5.81 million nonfarm jobs, or 4.2 percent of the total, in those 12 months as a global recession sapped demand and a credit crisis raised companies' borrowing costs. Manufacturers fired 1.58 million employees and 1.1 million dropped off construction payrolls.

Some employers have been able to add jobs because demand for their services rises with population growth and shifts in demographics, said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James Financial Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida. Defense hiring and stimulus spending also have bolstered federal jobs, he said.

"The government, like health care, gives some level of support during recessions," Brown said.

Niche hiring by itself won't lead to net U.S. job growth, said Raymond Stone, managing director of Stone & McCarthy Research in Skillman, N.J. The impetus will have to come from residential construction and manufacturing, he said.

Stone is watching temporary-job numbers for signs of a turn in payroll losses, because companies make short-term hires when they're waiting to see if increased demand is sustainable.

"What we're seeing here is not job gains yet," Stone said. "We're seeing stabilization in temporary employment, and I hope that means stabilization of overall employment, with a lag of about six months."

The latest U.S. recession started in December 2007 and is "likely over," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said last month. Consistent monthly job growth didn't return until about two years after the 2001 recession.

The unemployment rate will keep rising even after payrolls increase as more people gain confidence to start looking for work, said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York. He predicts the U.S. unemployment rate will peak in the first quarter at 10.2 percent.

"Layoffs are down; they're not getting worse," Basile said. "It feels like there is a turning point coming."

Gorce was one of the U.S. workers who didn't have to wait for the economy to turn. The former employee of Eagle Claw Fishing Tackle Co. found a job in housekeeping in September last year at Centura Health. She took courses on weekends to become a certified phlebotomist and was hired last month.

"I thought I was going to be doing that other career for the rest of my life," Gorce said, referring to her 11 years working at Eagle Claw. "Now, I have so much more room to grow."

The health care industry has been a leader in job creation, with "a straight line of uninterrupted growth" since 1990, said Richard Cooper, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics in Philadelphia. Average health care employment increased 58 percent from 1990 to 2008.