Long lines snake through the halls at the San Diego Marriot. Women dressed in suits and men wearing ties, all holding on to their resumes and hopes of finding a job.

This is a job fair with 17 companies and schools, including the army and the Border Patrol, seeking to find new recruits, amongst people looking for a career or a career change.

“We´ve quadrupled the number of attendees compared to previous job fairs held in November and December” said Job facilitator Robert Brown.

“We usually had about 150 searchers, we had 200 at the last event but today over 800 people came looking for a chance” he added.

The number is very telling of a faltering economy affecting thousands of San Diegans.

According to Labor Statistics unemployment in San Diego had dropped from 10.6 in July to 9.2 in November 2011, but the drop might be explained by seasonal hires for the Holidays, and those same people found themselves without a job in January.

“Unemployment is high, people are desperate to get back to work. I see people with Master´s degrees willing to go into sales, and kids fresh out of high school doing the same. I´ve been surprised to see people in mid-career willing to go back to school to become more employable” Brown adds.

His perception is backed up by a recent study by the non-partisan think tank Equinox that just released its annual Quality of Life Dashboard. Researchers found the number of jobs has increased over the last decade, but the increase has been in low paying sectors such as leisure, hospitality and food services.

San Diego as a region has lost jobs in mid-high paying sectors, bad news considering the cost of living in the area is increasing at a faster rate than the national average and other major cities in the West coast.

Amongst the job hunters was 24 year old Israel Cay-etano, who recently quit his job as manager at a pizza chain and is now thinking of joining the Border Patrol as a way to get some job security.

“What convinced me is the possibility of earning up to $75 grand a year, after three years on the job” Cayetano explains, “what I want more than anything is a steady job, I want to stop feeling anxious that I will lose my job at any moment.”

But not only the very young where among the crowd, but 36 year old Joel Gutierrez, a family man who used to make a good income as a phone salesman.

“I used to earn up to $60,000 a year as a salesman and now I could be happy to secure $20 grand. I have a job but need more because the bills keep coming every month and are starting to pile up,” he explains.

Amongst the job offers is the direct sale of women´s clothing by Jockey, hoping to recruit women to start their own business.

“It is the new division of the firm and we are hoping to recruite 500 women in the first quarter of the year” said sales representative Marijane Ralph.

But those offers and others including going back to school are not what Gutierrez is looking for.

“There are too many schools and direct sales offers here” Gutierrez lamented, “Those sales companies ask you to invest and that is not solution for my problems at the moment.”

Gutierrez might not be interested, but many others seem open to getting back to school and changing careers all together. One of the booths with the longest lines to ask for information was Link 2 Life, a technical program for Emergency Technicians and patient care personnel. 

They offer paramedic training for 10 weeks, intensive course for 14 days y guarantee financial support to pay for studing.

Melissa Lundsford was the one in charge of giving out information in the booth, in her experience San Diegans are not so much out of a job but in low paying jobs that don’t allow them to pay off their debts.

“This career path is mostly attractive for the very young, recent high school graduates that are looking for a career and those in their 50s and 60s that made a career in fields that are no longer as profitable as they used to be, such as insurance, real estate and sales” she explained.

“Those people are looking for job security that their old jobs no longer offer, in fact, people are looking for a sure thing which is more elusive than ever”, she added.