With all the focus on the nation's jobless rate, the number of people underemployed or looking for work, it's difficult to find a glimmer of hope from the unemployment line. But just in time for the holidays nine previously unemployed workers have found just that. They're the first graduates of a pilot program designed to provide rapid training for jobs in manufacturing. And the LePage administration is hoping it will become a model for employers looking for skilled labor.

Damian West says it's been a rough few years since he got out of the Army in 2007. He was an infantryman who spent a year-and-a-half in Iraq. Back at home, he says, he couldn't find jobs that matched his skillset and he couldn't earn a steady paycheck.

At times he says he had nothing to do, and no hope. "It's very scary out there. I feel bad. There's thousands upon thousands of vets on the street and it makes me sick," West says.

West got a break when a Veterans' Resource Center hooked him up with the Mobile Outreach Skills Training program known as MOST. It's a rapid training and job placement program for manufacturers who commit to hiring trainees who successfully complete a two-week course.

West expects to begin earning $14.50 an hour at his new job as a welder fabricator for WahlcoMetroflex in Lewiston. "Not only will I have a job but I will move up in the company. I have no doubt about it," he says. "I have no doubt about other vets doing the same thing if they get that opportunity."

Instruction is provided in a high-tech mobile classroom that can literally be brought to the company's parking lot. Twenty-two-year-old Steve Roberts, one of the graduates of the MOST program, demonstrates how an on-screen exercise helps him make a virtual weld in a simulated welding shop. Roberts is graded on the spot with an 84.

"It teaches you to be comfortable, how far away to be, because if you're too far away you'll get air-holes in the weld, makes it weak," Roberts says. "Tells you how fast to go, grades you on how fast you go."

The MOST program is funded, in part, by the Maine Labor and Economic and Community Development and the Unity Foundation. It's gotten strong support from Gov. Paul LePage, who sees it as a way to meet the paradox facing Maine manufacturers: at a time of high unemployment many still face a shortage of skilled workers.

Maine Labor Commissioner Robert Winglass says the state would like to replicate the program, but needs more participating manufacturers, not just in welding, and more funding.

"This is cost effective," Winglass says. "To train, let's say, 70 people might very well cost us over $2 million. On this program we can train 70 people for not even a half-a-million dollars. Now, those other programs are longer and more comprehensive, but the fact of the matter is if there's a job opening this is responsive, and it's responsive very, very quickly."

In other states, the MOST program has a job placement rate of 95 percent and a job retention rate after six months of 91 percent. Don Mondor is the manufacturing manager for WahlcoMetroflex, which employs about 100 people. Mondor says the MOST has exceeded his expectations.

"Finding people has been our difficulty," he says. "MOST has been successful in soliciting and screening the type of people that we really need, longterm. They worked with us to determine the character traits and skills of the people that we needed. So we were excited because these were the type of folks that we were looking to hire."

Mondor says the company advertises in traditional media but doesn't necessarily reach its workforce that way. All the recent graduates will have to pass a basic welding test and undergo eight weeks of on-the-job training, in addition to longterm mentoring.

New graduate Damian West says he also plans to go to college and take some math and other courses to make sure that he advances in his new-found career.