Proposed slash in retraining funds decried

Sousa has been looking for work ever since. She makes almost daily visits to the Fall River Career Center, on the hunt for work and for workshops to update her skills. But months of searching have yielded few interviews and no job offers.

“It’s March and I’m still looking,’’ said Sousa, 54.

“I’m pretty much open to anything, any new experience. I think I have a lot to offer.’’

Sousa is among record numbers of workers who have seen jobs wiped out by plant closings, company failures, outsourcing, and shifting markets in the last few years, many of whom have flocked to state career centers and training programs to help them start over. But even as advocates say such services are needed more than ever, Congress is debating whether to cut $3 billion in funding for 3,000 career centers — including 37 in Massachusetts — that provide a lifeline to the unemployed through counseling, job listings, and training.

Congressional Republicans have proposed eliminating all funding for the program, forcing most, if not all, of the centers to close.

Jerry Rubin, executive director of the Jewish Vocational Service, a nonprofit employment services agency that oversees The Work Place career center in downtown Boston, called the proposed cuts “absolutely shocking’’ when so many laid off workers are struggling to find jobs.

“Many of the jobs that people counted on are not coming back,’’ Rubin said. “To entirely eliminate employment and training services is unfair to people who are out of work — and unfair to the recovery of the economy.’’

In all, 15 million Americans’ jobs disappeared for good during the recent recession, according to new research by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies. That includes nearly 340,000 jobs held by workers in Massachusetts, enough to fill Gillette Stadium nearly five times over.

Known as dislocated workers, because their jobs are unlikely to return even after the economy strengthens, their numbers are at the highest level since the US Labor Department began tracking them 30 years ago, according to the study.

They are also a key reason why unemployment remains stubbornly high nearly two years after the economic recovery began. The Northeastern study found that many dislocated workers were unemployed for six months or longer, often because their skills did not match available jobs. New England had the greatest share of dislocated workers among long-term unemployed in the nation; nearly 6 of 10 workers unemployed for more than six months lost jobs permanently, compared to 5 of 10 nationally.

“These are people who lost jobs through no fault of their own,’’ said Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum, who led the research. “And many have been unemployed for more than a year.’’

The funding that states receive to help the dislocated and other job hunters comes through the Workforce Investment Act, which has been targeted by congressional Republicans seeking to kill the program and shutter career centers. US Senator Scott Brown, a first-term Republican, is the only member of the Massachusetts delegation to support a budget proposal that includes eliminating career center funding.

In a written statement after the vote, Brown said, “hard but necessary decisions’’ are required to shrink the federal deficit. “American families want their leaders, at every level of government, to tighten their belts,’’ the statement said.

Brown declined to be interviewed or comment specifically on whether he supported career center funding.

US Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Peabody, has led past efforts to keep the centers open. He said Republicans have criticized some centers as ineffective in providing training that leads to employment. But in Massachusetts, Tierney said, highly specialized training programs have succeeded in winning people jobs in fields such as alternative energy.

“I don’t think they’re all great,’’ Tierney said of the centers nationwide, “but ours are models for other parts of the nation.’’

In a survey of dislocated workers who lost jobs in 2009, the Labor Department found that 79 percent of Massachusetts workers found jobs within three months after completing a career center training program, compared to 51 percent nationally.

As Sousa, the laid-off general manager, shows, the ranks of dislocated workers include not just unskilled laborers, but also professors, investment advisers, and degreed professionals. New England had the greatest share of dislocated workers with master’s degrees or higher in the nation, according to Northeastern’s Sum. More than one of every 10 workers with at least a master’s degree in the region were displaced from jobs between 2007 and 2009.

They are people like Anthony Baxter, who lost his job as a science professor at Framingham State College last September when the college cut all but one of his courses because of a decline in enrollment.

Baxter, who said he holds two master’s degrees from Harvard, has looked for full-time work ever since. He regularly visits The Work Place, yet he had just two interviews in seven months for tutoring jobs.

“It’s really discouraging,’’ said Baxter, 57. “I’ve got a good resume and a lot of experience.’’

Manufacturing workers faced the greatest share of job displacement in the recent recession, followed by workers in information services and financial activities, according to the Northeastern study, which analyzed Labor Department data. Nearly half of dislocated workers had been in their positions for more than three years when the jobs disappeared.

Hardest hit were men without college degrees. One in five black men with less than a bachelor’s degree, and one in seven white men with this level of education, were laid off permanently — rates rivaling the Great Depression.

Juan Soto lost his $12-an-hour job last April when the janitorial services company he worked for saw business slump. He followed the advice of a friend and got career help at Boston Career Link in Roxbury, a state career center operated by Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries, a beneficiary of the federal funding. Soto learned he qualified for training to become an automotive technician, which ultimately helped the 25-year-old get a job fixing cars at a Quincy auction house for $12.50 an hour. Soto had to give up that job after he was injured in a car crash, but said the training put him on a career path where he feels like he can advance and possibly open his own shop one day.

“I don’t want to flip burgers or clean toilets for the rest of my life,’’ Soto said.

Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mwoolhouse@globe.com.