The recession has flooded Maryland's temporary agencies and job fairs with people looking for work, as the state unemployment rate hit a 17-year high.

A mid-March job fair at FedEx Field in Landover attracted the largest turnout organizers have seen in recent years. Some 4,200 people competed for positions with health maintenance organization Kaiser Permanente, telecommunications giant Verizon Communications and other employers.

At least 240 interviews or hires were made, said Jeff LeBel, general manager of the Washington, D.C., area office of The Employment Guide. The employment company coordinated the job fair, along with partners such as MontgomeryWorks and the Prince George's County Economic Development Corp.

"It certainly was the largest candidate turnout we have seen in the recent past," LeBel said. Another job fair is slated for Monday at the Hilton Hotel on Colesville Road in Silver Spring.

Area staffing companies report a huge uptick in applicants for fewer openings than were available a year ago.

"We're definitely seeing the number of candidates increasing in offices as compared to past years," said Bethany Perkins, a spokeswoman for employment services giant Manpower. The company has offices throughout Maryland, including in Gaithersburg, Bethesda, Columbia, Frederick and Linthicum.

While there may be fewer openings than a year ago, Wanda L. Smith, president of Symphony Placements in Timonium and president of the Maryland Staffing Association, said she has noticed an increase in recent weeks. Other executives with Maryland placement companies have given similar reports, she said.

"We're cautiously optimistic," Smith said.

With the increase in candidates, business executives have been able to choose from a pool of more qualified workers than a year ago, she noted.

Maryland's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate reached 6.7 percent in February, up from 6.2 percent in January and 3.7 percent a year ago, according to federal figures. The state rate continued to remain below the national rate, which hit 8.1 percent in February. However, Maryland's jobless rate was its highest since June 1992, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

The number of Maryland jobs declined by a net 6,600 last month, with about 5,400 lost in construction and 2,800 in professional and business services, while other sectors gained. Over the past year, 52,000 jobs, or 2 percent, have been lost in Maryland, although that is lower than the national loss rate of 3 percent.

The national picture grew even bleaker last week, as the Labor Department reported Friday that the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent in March from 8.1 percent in February and 663,000 nonfarm jobs were lost in March. For the week ended March 28, the number of seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 669,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure and the most since October 1982, the department reported Thursday.

Openings are higher in fields such as educational services, health care and the federal and state government — industries that have added jobs in the past year in Maryland.

Accounting, insurance and health care — both administrative and clinical — have remained strong, Smith said. The legal industry is among the weaker sectors, she said. "There have been large layoffs at local law firms," Smith said.

Some staffing companies themselves shed employees last year, particularly in the dreadful fourth quarter. In that quarter, employment at staffing companies nationwide was down almost 20 percent from the 2007 fourth quarter, according to a survey by the American Staffing Association.

Maryland labor officials are working hard to provide services to those who have been laid off, Thomas E. Perez, secretary of the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said in a statement.

"Marylanders who have lost jobs should file for unemployment insurance quickly and visit their local one-stop career centers to access job postings and training opportunities," he said.

Montgomery and Howard counties had the lowest January unemployment rates at 4.6 percent each. One sign that employment in the housing industry may pick up soon is that pending sales of previously owned homes nationally rose in February from January, according to the National Association of Realtors.

That trend was also seen in Maryland, which showed 4,437 units under contract in February, up from 3,823 in January. The February total was the highest since September.

Existing home sales for February from a year earlier declined by 22 percent in Maryland, according to the Maryland Association of Realtors. The median sales price was down 11 percent to $253,200.

This report originally appeared in The Business Gazette.