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PHOENIX — Arizonans unable to find work in the tightening economy here may have a better chance in D.C.

And being from Arizona could give them a leg up.

A list of available jobs within the Department of Homeland Security published by the General Accounting Office shows more than 250 are considered appointed positions.

But Amy Kudwa, who is press secretary during the transition of Homeland Security boss from Michael Chertoff to Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, said only about 190 of these are positions where a new secretary gets to replace the person now in the job.

And, she said, the odds of Napolitano reviewing résumés on all those are slim. She said more than half of those are administrative positions.

"The secretary is not going to get personally involved in all of those decisions," Kudwa said. "That's done much further down the chain."

Still, Napolitano is going to have some plum jobs to give out.

She gets two counselors who report directly to her. The GAO puts the minimum salary for people in these types of positions — labeled senior executive service — at $117,787, and they could top out at $177,000.

Also in that same pay category are a chief of staff and a deputy, a chief privacy officer and several press aides.

By comparison, Napolitano herself is set to get $191,300, though that is subject to congressional tinkering.

The reason there are so many slots to fill is that the vast department of about 218,000 workers has many sub-agencies within it because it was cobbled together in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

It combines what was the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Transportation Security Administration and even the Coast Guard.

And each of those, except for the Coast Guard, has appointed positions that have to be filled each time the administration changes.

The heads of some of these subgroups, like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, are named by the president. That person, in turn, has a counselor and advisers.

Even within that agency there are subgroups, each with its own list of vacancies filled by appointment.

For example, there is the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, an Office of External Affairs, the Office of Disaster Assistance and the Office of Disaster Operations.

Many of the positions fall into the same senior executive service salary category. But there are some lower-level positions that still pay comparatively well.

The director of schedule and advance is a GS 15 on the federal pay scale, with a salary range of $120,830 to $153,200. The deputy director of advance and travel commands from $86,927 to $113,007. And even the confidential assistant to the White House liaison can make up to $53,574 a year, though Kudwa said someone in that position is unlikely to be hand-picked by Napolitano.

But there are drawbacks to moving to the nation's capital.

A Web site run by Bankrate.com figures that someone making $50,000 in the Phoenix area would need a 36 percent increase to compensate for the higher cost of living in Washington or the surrounding suburbs.

The big difference is in housing: It takes more than twice as much money to buy a home. And rents, on average, also are twice as high.

But Bankrate.com says there are a few things that actually are cheaper back East, including potato chips, bread and margarine, if that's enough to entice someone to move

There are also a few positions Napolitano will have to wait to fill.

Rod Beckstrom, the director of the National Cybersecurity Center, has a fixed appointment that runs through March 18, 2011. And Joseph Garcia, chief finance director for Gulf Coast recovery, gets to keep his job through at least Oct. 10.