NEW YORK — When Lynette Rogers, a self-professed workaholic, was laid off from her executive-assistant position in February, she knew only how to "work even harder" to find another job, she says. But when her night job waiting tables three nights a week also ended a month later, Rogers' savings account took a quick hit.

"I couldn't afford to not work. I needed to work," said Rogers, 42. "It wasn't just me and other people looking for work but lots of people I knew personally. We all wanted jobs."

There were the credit-card bills, a mortgage on her town-house in Newark, N.J., car payments, and food for her Golden Retriever and newly acquired kitten, Rogers said.

In this recession, Rogers' story is not unique. And even with the number of layoffs by major U.S. companies dropping 21 percent in August compared with July, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas, for many unemployed people the prospect of finding new work is difficult. All told, 15 million people are unemployed right now, and 5 million of them have been out of work for six months or longer, according to the latest payroll data.

That's a lot of competition for any job opening, but the good news is that hiring continues in some pockets of the economy. Job openings exist in fields ranging from the government to renewable energy to health care. And in some parts of the country, work is easier to find than others.

One area that will see a surge in employment: the federal government. From October 2009 though fall 2012, the federal government will hire nearly 273,000 workers, according to Partnership for Public Service, a Washington-based nonprofit. The spike in hiring — a 41 percent increase compared with the last three fiscal years combined — includes everything from nurses in the Defense Department to police officers serving in the Department of Homeland Security.

As baby boomers retire, there's also a demand by government agencies to fill roles left empty. Add the increased demand for jobs from the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Obama administration's attempt to outsource fewer government jobs means there will be more government jobs open than ever, said Max Stier, president of Partnership for Public Service.

"There are a lot of folks knocking on the door of government," Stier said. "Now it's a matter of hiring the right people."

In December 2008, 2.8 million people a week visited USAjobs.gov — the official federal government job site — a jump of more than 500,000 visits per week from the year before, according to Stier's organization.

Stier said people tend to consider government jobs when the economy dips. But one downside is the government's cumbersome hiring process. It can be drawn out and complex, and some agencies are less transparent than others. His advice? Be persistent.

If location counts for much in the job hunt, there's not a better place to be than Washington, according to Indeed.com, a Web site that aggregates job listings from many Web sites including CareerBuilder, corporate sites and newspaper classified ads.

A new index from Indeed.com ranks the top 50 cities by how many job seekers are available per posting. In D.C., there are about six job postings per seeker while Detroit's bruised automobile industry contributed to its 18-to-1 ratio and last-place ranking.

D.C. leads the rankings, followed by Jacksonville, Fla., which has three job postings for each unemployed person. Baltimore; Salt Lake City; New York City; San Jose; Hartford, Conn.; Oklahoma City; Austin, Texas; and Boston round out the top 10.

One state not on the list is Iowa, but it's been a center of wind-turbine production — a growing sector of the renewable-energy industry, said Britt Theismann, chief operating officer of the D.C.-based American Wind Energy Association.

On average, about 50 percent of wind-turbine parts are produced domestically, Theismann said. Just four or five years ago, only about a quarter of the parts were made in the United States.

With its large wind source and focus on renewable energy, Iowa stands second behind Texas in the amount of electricity produced from wind energy. Companies like Clipper Windpower, Acciona and TPI manufacture parts in Iowa.

Although there were fewer hires this year partly due to the recession, Theismann said, last year the wind-energy industry saw the creation of 13,000 jobs. But he said the industry is expected to grow and "we're going to have a lot of manufacturing jobs."

Meanwhile, Indeed.com's Chief Executive Paul Forster said education is a growing area for job seekers to mine. Education job postings are up 25 percent since August 2008 on Indeed.com and job-seekers' clicks on jobs as teachers, librarians, special education aids and more have doubled to almost 1.5 million.