Two well-paying blue-collar employers in Washington County are shuttering their businesses, adding to the woes of this Western Maryland county that already has a jobless rate among the highest in the state.

The soaring unemployment rate is a painful step back for a county that has tried in recent years to diversify its economy and attract new, high-technology businesses to the area. Known as "Hub City," Hagerstown has been at the center of a regional economy for years, with its highway connections and rail lines offering trucking and distribution companies easy access.

But over the past three years, the weakening economy has bled the Hagerstown area of jobs, mainly related to construction and manufacturing. In 2006, Washington County's unemployment rate averaged about 4.4 percent. In June, it stood at more than 10 percent and has been as high as nearly 12 percent this year, while the state's hovers just above 7 percent.

And just this past week, the county was reeling from news that two employers — a Northrop Grumman airplane maintenance facility and auto parts maker Kongsberg Automotive — plan to close, putting more than 100 people out of work.

Lois Rudy still has a chuckle and a smile to offer, but the stress of looking for a job for the past 18 months has been wearing. The Hagerstown resident has a college degree, computer skills and experience managing an office, and she still hasn't been able to find work since being laid off from a utility supply company last year.

"You put in for jobs and 99 percent of the time, you don't hear back," said Rudy, who is 49, as she filled out an application at a job fair where hundreds turned out last week at Kaplan University in Hagerstown.

The next big business that's expected to close is an ice cream manufacturing plant owned by Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch multinational corporation. That company announced in June that it plans to close the plant that makes Klondike and Good Humor ice cream at the end of next year, laying off all 460 employees.

The top employers in the county are the public schools, the county health system, and the three state prisons. And some believe that Hagerstown, with a population of 39,000, and the surrounding areas have been harder hit because the region's workforce hasn't been able to remake itself through higher education.

Chris Motz, president of Kaplan University, a for-profit higher education institution, said that part of the problem has been that the county, until the last few years, didn't have schools that offered baccalaureate degrees. In the past, people didn't need much more than a high school diploma to get a well-paying job at most of the local companies, but that's changed, he said.

Only in about the past five years have Kaplan and the University System of Maryland in Hagerstown offered four-year degrees, he said.

"We do have a lot of people without higher education," said Motz, whose university partnered with the local newspaper, The Herald-Mail, to hold Friday's job fair at the Kaplan campus. "They're very limited in the jobs they can apply for."

While draining on the local economy, the contracting job market has been a boon for the university, as more people apply for associate and bachelor's programs in hopes for finding a job with a new degree, Motz said. Enrollment "is the strongest it has been in the 13 years I've been here," Motz said.

At Kaplan on Friday, some people arrived dressed in suits while others wore casual attire as they applied for jobs. Employers such as DOT Foods, a distribution center, were hiring for part-time warehouse positions and drivers, and the company is wading through a flood of applicants, according to Lisa Zulauf, an administrative assistant.

"We have over 2,000 applications for a warehouse order selector position," Zulauf said. "It's hard to go through them all."

Financial services giant Citi employs 2,500 people at a credit-card services center in Hagerstown. Katrina Stanfield, a Citi recruiter at the job fair, said the company was looking to fill about 80 call-center jobs over the next four to six weeks. "It is definitely a good thing," Stanfield said of the new round of hiring.

Citi and First Data, a credit-card processing firm, are two of the largest private-sector employers in Washington County. The companies regularly adjust their workforces through hiring and layoffs but have largely provided stable employment in the county, according to Timothy R. Troxell, executive director of the Hagerstown-Washington County Economic Development Commission.

But the county has suffered from a trifecta of recession-related woes in the industries of construction, manufacturing and warehousing. Over the years, Troxell said, the county has been losing jobs that require people to "work with their minds and hands."

Troxell said he and others worked "behind the scenes" over the past year to try to keep Northrop Grumman and Kongsberg in Hagerstown, but the economics didn't work out.

Northrop doesn't expect to receive a Navy contract in time before its building lease runs out in December, and plans to shut down the facility on Aug. 26 and lay off 53 people. Earlier this year, 95 people were laid off from the plant, which maintained and modified the Navy P-3 airplane.

If Northrop does win the Navy contract next year, the work that would have come to Hagerstown will instead go to another U.S. facility, a company spokeswoman said.

Kongsberg plans to shutter its plant in October and lay off 64 employees who worked on operator control systems for industrial vehicles. The work is being transferred to other plants in the United States, according to the company.

Meanwhile, the county has developed a reputation as a bedroom community for people who commute to work in and around Baltimore or Washington. Hagerstown itself is a thriving retail area, with outlet stores and other retailers and restaurants.

But county residents are just as likely to find jobs in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which, for Troxell, means that he finds himself working with economic development offices in those states.

Troxell is optimistic. "I can tell you our activity level has picked up for new companies considering Hagerstown as a place to expand," he said. "I think we stabilized and hopefully we can start to see some growth."

Lois Rudy, however, has looked for jobs across the region without luck. Rudy, who is single, has applied to dozens of jobs since she was laid off in January last year and fears that many employers may see her as over-qualified and demanding too much in pay. But Rudy said she was willing to work just about any job, except for ones that require heavy lifting.

"I need a job. I need to pay my rent," Rudy said. "I worry running my air conditioning in the summer that I won't be able to afford the utility bill."

And companies, for their part, continue to worry about their ability to keep employees on the payroll.

Central Precision Inc., a full-service metals fabrication company that works with government and commercial clients, was growing at about $1 million a year in sales until the recession hit, according to Jim Weber, director of marketing.

In February, the company had to lay off about a quarter of its 100 workers, he said. Now, sales and staff have fallen to 2007 levels.

"I think everybody is in survival mode," Weber said. "We'll make the decisions to bring people back when we see a consistency in orders, and right now, that's not here."

Gus.sentementes@baltsun.com