Highline Community College can offer immediate help for workers displaced amid the current economic troubles.

The worker retraining program helps people who are unemployed or facing imminent layoffs learn new professional skills to get back in the work force.

"Workers who find out they are losing their jobs should check into retraining options as soon as possible," said John Huber, Highline's worker retraining manager. "We can start the enrollment and funding process even before their current job ends."

More than 200,000 people were searching for work in October as Washington state's unemployment rate hit 6.3 percent, according to the state Employment Security Department.

Worker retraining helps pay for the first quarter of college, including tuition, fees and books, so a student can take courses in a professional-technical education program.

Students continue to receive unemployment benefits during their studies.

Highline offers many professional-technical programs that train students for what are expected to be the nation's fastest growing professions through 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Highline's programs include medical assistant, paralegal, respiratory care, customer service specialist, personal fitness trainer and medical transcriptionist.