Saying Michele Steele went to the ends of the Earth to find summer workers might be a bit of a stretch, but not by much.

Frustrated with the tight Helena labor market and eager to try something different, the general manager of the Wingate Inn used an international exchange service to locate three sets of hands for the busy summer season -- a pair of young men from Ukraine, and a woman from eastern Russia.

Roman Rudyy and Taras Havrylyukh from the Ukrainian city of Lviv and Marina Kashcheera of Vladivostok, Russia, each 19, arrived in Helena early last month. They will stay and work at the hotel through mid-September, then spend a couple of weeks playing tourist in New York before flying back to their homes and back to college.

"Our (unemployment rate) is 2 percent (acutally 1.6 percent last month, according to the Department of Labor and Industry), and it's very difficult to find quality people," Steele said. "These are educated individuals, they're bright, they're excited to be here and they're really fun to work with. We're lucky to have the people we do have, but in the summer it just gets so busy."

Steele said industry friends in other states have used student exchange programs for summer help, so this summer she decided to give it a try. She asked for four students, but a second Russian girl ran into paperwork problems and couldn't make the trip.

The students do everything from housekeeping to landscaping to general maintenance. Steele said they're good-natured and reliable, and the exchange is beneficial for her other employees. She said the hotel employs around 30 people in the summer tourism season, and this is the first year in the last several that she's been fully staffed.

For their part, the Eastern Europeans say they're enjoying their time in Montana.

"We're amazed by the mountains and the very nice views," Rudyy said. "Your mountains are different."

Working at the Wingate wasn't enough for the students, so at night, when they're done at the hotel, they head downtown for full shifts at Bert & Ernie's, as prep cooks and dishwashers.

"They go and they go and they go," said restaurant owner Toby DeWolf. "It's 9:30, and we're all done, and they're asking 'What else can we do?'"

Overall, though, despite the area's exceptionally low unemployment rate, DeWolf said he's had better luck hiring this year for the busy summer season.

"It just seems there are more people looking for jobs right now," said DeWolf, who employs around 100 in the summer, twice the number on the payroll in slow winter months. "Last year we really struggled hard, but this year it's been easier," despite business being better than ever.

In some corners of the local economy, signs indicate the labor crunch may be easing ever so slightly. Mike Hughes of Mike Hughes Builders, current president of the Helena Building Industry Association, said his phone rang "two or three times" in the past week with people looking for construction work, "and that's very rare."

Hughes said talk at last week's state builders convention in Great Falls centered on a slowdown in growth in several areas, and he said Helena may be approaching that point as well.

"I think we're just in the beginning throes of a little bit of a slowdown," he said. "Most currently, I think Helena is starting to see what the rest of the state is seeing."

Nonetheless, it's still a challenge to find good employees, Hughes said.

"Labor in the construction industry is always a topic of conversation in terms of finding good people," he said. "The quantities are there, but the quality of people are what you struggle with, finding people who want to make a career out of what they do."

And while the labor situation remains difficult for many employers, it's still easier here than in other parts of the state, some say.

Heidi Walters is the local supervisor for Warehouse Demo Services, the company that contracts with Costco to offer in-store product demonstrations. Walters said she's currently fully staffed, and said it's easier to find help here than it was at her previous location.

"I came from the Bozeman Costco, and here in Helena I can actually say I'm doing just fine," she said. "Even with the unemployment rate here being almost identical to the Gallatin area, I pretty much have a full staff of around 40 people."

Walters said the cost of living, particularly rent, is lower here, meaning the $9 an hour she pays to start goes farther than it does in Bozeman.

"A lot of folks can't afford to live in Bozeman anymore," she said.

John Harrington can be reached at 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.