Building 45 at the Elliott Co. plant in Jeannette has the sky-high, wide-body look of an airplane hangar -- a good thing given that it contains what has to qualify as some of the world's largest classroom props.

Elliott has converted a vacant 66,000-square-foot warehouse into a training center where new hires learn how to design, manufacture and repair industrial turbines and compressors that can be the size of three or four SUVs.

At a time when the overall manufacturing sector has sustained some of the region's heaviest job losses, Elliott is bucking the trend.

Since January it has filled nearly 100 new jobs here, company officials said, expanding its regional work force to about 850.

"It's not that often we get news of that many jobs being added in manufacturing," said state Department of Labor and Industry analyst Lauren Nimal. "It's rare to see such large increases in any manufacturing industry statewide, definitely, and that's not limited to Pittsburgh."

Thanks largely to the oil industry boom, Elliott faces one of those nice problems that's a problem nonetheless: a shortage of qualified workers.

Its solution? Elliott set up its own training program in partnership with Westmoreland County Community College, the kind of initiative that economic development groups such as the Allegheny Conference have long pushed.

"One of our problems has been an aging, old work force, so there's been a big campaign to attract new talent -- not only machinists but engineering folks," said Mike Lordi, Elliott vice president of industrial products.

"The best way to train them is to take it over ourselves," he added.

With annual sales exceeding $800 million and a $50 million-plus payroll, Elliott provides the Jeannette economy with "a pretty big trickle down," he said, not to mention well-paying jobs.

"People talk about the only jobs being at Wal-Mart, but we have jobs that average $21 an hour," Mr. Lordi said.

Elliott's upbeat forecast belies the grim manufacturing portrait presented by regional data that compares the number of jobs in 2008 to the corresponding month in 2007.

For nearly a year, those comparisons have consistently shown 1,000 or so fewer manufacturing jobs in the 10-county Pittsburgh region. But things of late have gotten even worse, said regional economist Harold D. Miller.

There were 1,300 fewer manufacturing jobs this May compared with May 2007, 1,700 fewer in June and 1,900 fewer year-to-year in July.

Pittsburgh has proven more recession-proof than most benchmark regions, he said, but the growth has largely come in sectors that do not pay well, such as leisure/hospitality and administrative support.

"In contrast, the manufacturing sector, which is the biggest contributor to regional income because of the high wages it pays, is not only declining, but is losing jobs at an accelerating rate," Mr. Miller posted in his August column at pittsburghtoday.org.

Despite the overall trend, several factories here have boosted their labor forces this year. Besides Elliott, these include Westinghouse Co. at its Waltz Mill nuclear services plant in Madison and LaBarge Inc. at its East Pittsburgh site.

And last month, U.S. Steel Corp. cut the ribbon on its Mon Valley Works Training Hub at the RIDC River Place Industrial Park. Housed at the site of the former Duquesne Works, the facility will train workers headed for the three mills that make up the Mon Valley Works.

What makes Elliott's approach noteworthy, said Robert Connelly, WCCC dean of work force development, is the scope of its training, plus the fact that all of its participants are guaranteed jobs upon successful completion.

"The baby boomers are retiring, and all that knowledge is going out the door; and this is recapturing it," Mr. Connelly said. Ten apprentices are in this first class, split among machinists, welders and assemblers.

Mr. Connelly said the college often has held one-shot workshops but nothing like the two-month Elliott program that combines classroom work at WCCC with on-site training.

"They were going through the same problems most manufacturing companies are going through," he said. "They had jobs available but not the people with the skills and competencies to take those jobs."

Founded in 1895 as The Chicago Boiler Co., Elliott is a main-line manufacturer comprising 10 buildings on 102 acres. Based in Jeannette since 1914, some say its location has brought many pluses, as in the quality of its work force, but also some minuses, as in the puzzled looks from those who've never heard of the place.

Christiann Bash, an Elliott spokeswoman, wants to change that perception.

"We are experiencing huge growth both here and globally because of the energy markets we serve," she said.

Elliott's core business turns on the oversized, rotating machinery that taps resources found at oil and gas fields, refineries, chemical plants, steel mills and sugar and paper mills.

A wholly owned subsidiary of the Tokyo-based Ebara Corp., Elliott employs about 850 in the region. With 1,600 employees in 28 locations worldwide, its top competitors include GE, Dresser-Rand and Siemens.

"We consider ourselves in a David and Goliath kind of thing," said Mr. Lordi, with 80 percent of company products being shipped internationally to developing regions in the Mideast, Persian Gulf, China, the Pacific Rim and South America.

"They don't have a lot of power on the grid so they have to have their own power plants. There's a lot of different applications for the products we make," Mr. Lordi explained.

The future didn't always look as bright for Elliott, where in June 2004 280 hourly workers found themselves working without a new contract. There was little movement and a lot of frustration until February of this year, when a settlement was reached that included a $1,100 signing bonus and annual wage increases of 4, 3 and 3 percent. The pact expires in February 2011.

"God, we negotiated for four years, 48 hours turned into like 48 months," said Joe Mochar, president of USW Local 1145. "But thanks to the turnaround in oil," he said, "Elliott began to pick up business."