The cargo loads heading out from Central Oregon Truck Co. stations have grown more frequent in recent years, with demand for low-cost freight service pushing up company profits each of the last three years.

But Rick Williams, the Prineville-based company’s CEO, needs another truck driver or two to keep that momentum going.

Actually, he could use about 20.

Williams faces a shortage of truck drivers at a time when demand for trucking service is growing. He’d like to have 210 drivers, but is at about 190 right now.

Trucking is one of more than 20 industries in Oregon where employers say they struggle to find skilled workers. A new report from the Oregon Employment Department, “Key Workforce Challenges: Businesses Struggle to Find Skilled Workers,” looked at job postings filed with the department in the fall of 2011, finding more than 2,000 open positions had gone unfilled for two months or longer.

With tens of thousands of Oregon residents looking for work, bringing in a few extra truck drivers may not seem too hard.

But finding qualified drivers “is a huge challenge,” Williams said.

They need a commercial driver’s license to operate big trucks. They need to pass physicals and driver safety courses in order to be insured.

Every day Williams is short of workers, he’s losing business.

In Central Oregon, “there’s just not enough people with the skills we need as an over-the-road truck driving business,” Williams said. So his company, which will soon move to Redmond, spends $10,000 to $15,000 a month on advertisements, across the country, looking for qualified drivers.

Trucking isn’t the only sector in Oregon where employers are having trouble finding skilled workers.

Employers in fields like nursing, physical therapy, auto repair and engineering are hard pressed to fill openings in the state, the report said.

“It is a little bit surprising on the surface, when you think that there’s more than 100,000 unemployed (Oregonians) and 30,000 job vacancies,” said Gail Krumenauer, an employment economist with the Employment Department and one of the report’s authors. “But when you think about all the different factors in many of those openings, the minimum education and experience requirements for fields like nursing, those skills aren’t easily transferred” from another line of work.

Almost all of the jobs going unfilled require post-high school education.

While 83 percent of Oregon adults have high school diplomas, just 55 percent have an associate degree or higher, according to 2010 U.S. Census data,

Some high-tech companies, like Bend-based RBD Instruments, struggle to find workers with the right skill sets.

RBD Instruments makes surface analysis devices. They help researchers and manufacturers analyze layers of atoms on various surfaces. It’s an important engineering tool for the development of aircraft, biomedical, solar and other devices.

Company President and CEO Randy Dellwo hired a new employee earlier this year, bringing his workforce to 13.

And he’d like to keep adding workers. Finding qualified employees has long been a challenge, though.

The Employment Department report noted 74 engineering jobs that went unfilled for two months or longer last fall.

“For companies like ours, we need people with electronics skills and physics or chemistry backgrounds,” Dellwo said. “Those are hard to find, not just in Central Oregon but nationally.”

It isn’t just advanced fields like engineering where employers are struggling to find qualified workers.

More than 100 open positions for mechanics, installation and repair workers went unfilled for two months of longer last fall, the Employment Department report showed.

Krumenauer’s report follows a June audit from the Oregon Secretary of State, which found more training is needed to fill the growing number of “middle-skill” jobs, like bookkeepers, accounting clerks and preschool teachers.

Some of the greatest demand in Central Oregon is for welders, plumbers and mechanics, said Greg Lambert, founder of employment agency Mid Oregon Personnel.

Many of the area’s mechanics are aging, Lambert said, and there aren’t enough younger workers training for the field. Others have been out of work for years, victims of the housing market crash and a drop-off in demand for repair services. A worker’s skills tend to diminish the longer he or she is unemployed.

“That’s a huge issue, which I see all the time,” Lambert said.

Deschutes County’s unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in June, according to Oregon Employment Department figures. The rate has remained in double digits for 44 straight months.

Jefferson County’s June unemployment rate was 11 percent, while Crook County’s was 12.8 percent.

The solution to the skill mismatch problem is several fold, Krumenauer said.

Employers can follow in Central Oregon Truck Co.’s footsteps, by boosting advertising and recruitment efforts. They can offer more on-the-job training for workers.

But community colleges and universities offer perhaps the best chance to give workers the tools needed for long-term employment, Krumenauer said. Enrollment at Central Oregon Community College boomed after the start of the Great Recession, though that pace has slowed a bit in the last year.

Efforts to establish a four-year branch of Oregon State University in Bend would expand Central Oregon’s job training resources, she said.

Central Oregon Community College is rolling out a series of new programs over the next few years, said Vice President for Instruction Karin Hilgersom, including veterinary technician and entrepreneurial courses.

They’re in preliminary talks to start a program that would train people to manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles.

The school has also had discussions about a trucking program, Hilgersom said. But with limited resources and a drop-off in state funds for higher education, truck driver courses would likely be years away.

“There has to be a balance between what a student should expect to gain from a degree, what each industry needs and fiscally, whether the college can launch a program so that there’s a return on the investment,” Hilgersom said. “We really don’t want to spend $500,000 to start a program that’s only going to get five people jobs.”