Last fall, Jason Hagen was laid off.

A loan officer, the Madras resident spent four months looking for work with no success. With a wife and young son to support, Hagen needed to find something quickly. Heading back to school to earn a bachelor’s degree would take too long.

His answer was a career change. In February, he enrolled at Phagans’ Central Oregon Beauty College in Bend to learn how to become a barber. It’s a far cry from the corporate world of finance he once inhabited, but Hagen is content.

“Getting back into the work force quicker was a larger priority, and this industry gives you a lot more freedom to be who you are,” Hagen said.

Stories like Hagen’s help explain why Bend-based Phagans’ Cosmetology Colleges — which also operates schools in Salem, Medford, Corvallis, Newport and Grants Pass — is experiencing a surge in enrollment. Just like in higher education, vocational schools also are bulging with more students seeking new job skills.

“Like most colleges, we are a counter-cyclical business,” said Kristie Davis, vice president and chief financial officer of Phagans’ Cosmetology Colleges. “When the economy is down, we tend to have an increase in enrollment.”

The Bend school’s enrollment averages 85 students a year. This year, it’s about 120, Davis said. That’s an increase of 41 percent.

Partly due to the surge in enrollment, and partly due to real estate opportunities created by the recession, the Phagans’ school in Bend is planning next March to leave its longtime Second Street home and move into a new and larger home on Bend’s east side.

The new facility, a two-story office building measuring roughly 13,250 square feet on Northeast Cushing Drive near St. Charles Bend, will be more than 40 percent larger than its current location.

The building is in a medical district overlay zone, but the city granted the school a conditional use permit.

“We need more space,” Davis said.

The school leases its current location, which is next to Bi-Mart and behind the Bob Thomas Car Co. dealership. When it moved to the location 23 years ago from downtown Bend, the area was vibrant compared with the ghost town that was the city’s core at the time, Davis said.

The construction of the Bend Parkway limited access to the school, but Davis said its growth and the limitations of being a renter are prompting the move.

“With the current economic conditions, it started to pencil out because it was more advantageous for us to purchase a building rather than continue to lease, which is exciting for us,” Davis said.

A customer survey the school performed showed most of Phagans’ return customers, as well as students and staff, live on the east side, Davis said.

Besides being more visible, the new location also will be more hip and modern, Davis said. The school’s curriculum requires students to spend hundreds of hours in the school’s salon, practicing their skills on the public, who pay a discount price for haircuts, facials, pedicures, waxings and other cosmetic procedures.

For example, a pedicure is $20, a standard perm is $30.95, and on Thursdays, men’s haircuts are $4.99.

“It’s slower, because the students are under the direction of instructors, so it takes longer, but you can save a lot of money,” said Susan Miller, an Indiana-based spokeswoman for the American Association of Cosmetology Schools. “So lots of folks are going that route, and student salons are doing booming business.”

Miller said the nation’s beauty industry is a roughly $60 billion market sector.

While the economy may be down, Miller said the beauty industry is somewhat recession-proof. People might go an extra week between haircuts or extra month between hair colorings, but vanity usually wins out. Even if someone is out of work, he or she likely will want to look their best for job interviews, she noted.

“It’s an affordable luxury,” said Hagen, the barber student.

Hagen said the money he’ll make as a barber won’t be nearly as good as in his past profession in mortgage finance. But Hagen, a self-professed “talker,” said a career as a barber will fit his personality. It’s also a means to an end — getting back to work.

Hagen graduates next month and will move his family to Newport, where he hopes to land a barber job.

“Money isn’t everything, but I want to support my family, and anything to give me a broader spectrum of skills is better,” Hagen said.

Jim Cox, executive director of the American Association of Cosmetology Schools, said graduates usually work initially in a spa or salon and build a roster of clients. Eventually, some strike out on their own once they have an established client base.

According to the Alexandria, Va.-based National Accrediting Commission of Cosmetology Arts and Sciences, which accredits roughly 1,350 cosmetology schools across the country, a barber can, on average, expect to earn $40,000 a year.

Phagans’ barber course takes nine months to complete. The school also offers programs in hair design, esthetics and nail technology. The cosmetology course, which includes instruction in all of the programs, is a 40-hour-a-week program that takes 17 months to complete.

Phagans’ school to move in March

Phagans’ Central Oregon Beauty College will be moving from its Northeast Second Street location by Bi-Mart to a two-story office building on Northeast Cushing Drive near St. Charles Bend.

Its new space will be more than 40 percent larger.