from www.tennessean.com – Jamie Tillman [pictured] looked for a job for nearly eight months.

The 22-year-old applied to sit-down restaurants, fast-food chains and retail stores at the mall — all the kinds of places she has worked before.

But in August, with the unemployment rate at 9.6 percent in Davidson County and 10.7 percent statewide, she wasn’t having much luck. After losing her car and running out of friends’ couches to sleep on, Tillman found herself in a Nashville homeless shelter.

To get there, she walked past one of the city’s five adult entertainment clubs. Then it hit her.

“I wonder what it takes to work in there,” said Tillman.

She explained her situation to the manager, who guided her through the application process for obtaining a sexually oriented business license from Metro. On Tuesday, she and five other applicants went to the Metro Office Building on Second Avenue to receive their permits. Five others who were not present also were granted permits.

Tillman worked in an adult entertainment club for the first time Thursday night. (The Tennessean is not naming the establishment at Tillman’s request, though the paper did verify her employment there.)

It turns out Tillman’s choice isn’t unique. More women — and, for the first time this year, men — are turning to adult entertainment as a way to find lucrative work quickly and legally.

“We’re seeing lots of new girls applying for permits, guys who are applying for permits to dance at the new all-male club and more than a few women renewing after letting their permit lapse for a few years,” said Christine Gibson, a Metro codes compliance inspector who oversees sexually oriented business licensing and entertainer permitting.

“They are saying they’re coming back because either their husbands or boyfriends lost their job, they themselves lost a job or they just need more income for their families. There are a lot of single mothers that apply.”

The total number of people who applied for or renewed a permit necessary to work in an adult entertainment club or adult bookstore in Nashville reached 330 in September, compared to about 300 this time last year. While that number may not sound like a big increase, it comes as some clubs have shut down and the ones that remain are actually seeing fewer customers.

One dancer, who would agree to give only her stage name, “Leather,” said the growing number of dancers, combined with fewer customers, means she’s only bringing in about $280 on a good night, compared to about $650 on a good night last year. She blamed the economy and relatively new Metro rules that require distance between customers and dancers in the club’s main room.

Across the country, there is anecdotal evidence that the number of people entering sex industry work — legal and illegal — is on the rise as joblessness continues, said Bernadette Barton, an associate professor of sociology and women’s studies at Morehead State University in Kentucky who specializes in the study of sexuality. Between 1998 and 2003, Barton interviewed exotic dancers for her book Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers.

Barton said the reason more people are looking for work in the city’s sexually oriented businesses is simple: Turnover is high, the emotional and physical toll can be steep and the pay can be high, too. That means the industry is almost always hiring.

In clubs visited by The Tennessean for this story, there was a former real estate agent, a former dog groomer and Iraq war veterans — all new to the industry and working in the clubs because of the economy, they said.

Barton said most dancers aren’t stupid, and none of the women she interviewed for her book also worked as prostitutes. Several did acknowledge drinking or using drugs in order to deal with performing partially or totally nude or to endure the sexually charged mistreatment that sometimes happens in clubs. Others said they enjoyed the opportunity to perform.

“For people willing to look, it tells you something about the cost of living, what kind of jobs and what kind of pay may be readily available to women,” Barton said.

But in Nashville, it’s not just women who are taking jobs in adult entertainment clubs.

Just south of downtown in a building so recently occupied that the sign is really a removable banner, Cole Wakefield says he is doing a lot of business and his best dancers are taking home $500 to $600 a night. The reason: Arrow Nashville is the only strip club featuring male dancers in Tennessee. Wakefield, who co-owns and operates Arrow, was the only club owner willing to speak with The Tennessean about the industry, the economy and his work force.

“We have people come in pretty much every day looking for work,” said Wakefield, who got into the industry after his career as a freelance travel writer and porn reviewer began to suffer the recession’s woes this year. “A lot of them are people who may not have that much in the way of education and need to earn a living. We’re happy to give them that chance.”

And then there is Tillman.

When Tillman picked up her permit Tuesday, she looked something like Miley Cyrus in skinny jeans and stilettos.

At 18, Tillman’s mother had a child and was on her own. So when Tillman — who doesn’t have any children — turned 18, her family expected her to support herself. She got a job, enrolled at a community college and got a car. That was in 2006.

Then Tillman lost her job at Applebee’s when business slowed. That started her on a downward slope familiar to many who are struggling financially.

Tillman’s car broke down while she was looking for work. But since she couldn’t afford the towing company’s bill, the company kept and sold her car to collect its fees, according to court records. Tillman then decided to move in with her ailing grandfather.

Tillman cared for him until he died last year. She grew depressed and sought medical care even though she did not have insurance. That generated more bills. Then the bank foreclosed on the home where Tillman and her grandfather lived because there was nobody to pay the mortgage, she said. Tillman worked at Red Lobster, but she was laid off in February.

“I finally just had enough,” she said. “I just have to get my life back on track. Earn some money. Save an emergency fund and get enough together to get my own place and hopefully get back in school.”

Tillman thinks she needs about $5,000: $4,000 to get her own place, buy a used car and pay tuition, and $1,000 to put in savings for emergencies so that she’ll never be in this situation again.

To pay for her sexually oriented entertainer permit, Tillman, who also just landed a part-time job at a retail shop in an area mall, pawned her jewelry, some of which her grandmother gave her.

The permit, with its required photos, fingerprints and background check, cost her $58