It's an already tough job market, and now the swine flu is making it even tougher for some unemployed Nevadans to find job.

One local man says he was laid off from his job after missing several days of work when he came down with the H1N1 virus. Now he fears he's being discriminated against because of an illness he's no longer contagious with.

21-year-old Ben Smith was diagnosed with swine flu two weeks ago.
He says the doctor ordered him to stay home from work for at least five days, but when he went back to his temp job, the position had been filled. Now Smith says finding a new job is nearly impossible.

It's been more than a week since Ben Smith got over the flu, yet he continues to walk from business to business in the Carson Valley, looking for any job openings available. He says his wife and young baby depend on it. The problem is, Smith says hardly anyone is hiring, and once employers see his resume with an unexplainable hole in it, he feels obligated to tell them he's been sick.

"When people hear swine flu, they automatically panic and don't really want to be around it. To this day, after I tell people I've had it and been over it for a week, they still start backing up and go 'woah, I don't want to get sick,'" said Smith.

And Smith is just one of many unemployed locals who are being hit hard by the illness. Employees at job training agency, "JOIN" in Carson City, say they lose two to three students a day to the flu...although many sick people are coming in to look for jobs, even with symptoms.

"Every time a job opens up, there's probably 300 or 500 people applying. So the better your training is, the more you know and the better you'll do on the test you take. Nobody wants to miss that. They want to learn as much as they can so they can apply for the jobs that are out there," said Tina Matranga with JOIN.

JOIN staff is now being extra cautious, and even telling sick people to go home, no matter how desperate they are for work.

Smith says he needs to support his family, and has no choice but to keep on looking for a job. Each time he walks into a building, he hopes the potential employer doesn't ask him for specifics as to why he's out of work again.

"When you say swine flu, people get on edge about it. It's something that is going around really fast and taking its toll, but it's still just the flu," said Smith.

The staff at JOIN says their best advice to those who are unemployed and come down with swine flu is to take a break from looking for jobs and just get yourself well. They say if you're sick, your impression on a potential employer probably won't be as good as it would if you were feeling your best.