Prospects Improving for Job-Seekers in Southern California

This is a pretty good time to be looking for work in Southern California. Experts seem to agree that the economy here is on the rebound, after taking a longer-and-worse-than-average battering from the last national recession.

“It’s the best it’s been in a long time, and it’s going to get better,” said Tom Lieser, associate director of the UCLA Business Forecast Project at the Anderson School of Management.

True, the job market is expected to grow three times faster in silicon-rich Northern California than in Los Angeles County. “But that’s a smaller economy, and it’s more specialized,” Lieser said.

“If someone is looking for a career as a computer chip designer, they’re going to go to Santa Clara County. But [Southern California] is the largest and most diverse job market in the state.”

Overall, jobs are growing at a more rapid pace in Orange County and the Inland Empire than in Los Angeles County, which lost 431,000 jobs between 1990 and 1994, according to Chapman University’s Center for Economic Research. Still, the county is the state’s job center, boasting nearly 4 million of the region’s 7 million jobs.

In general, job trends in Southern California are much the same as they are across the country--with some interesting local wrinkles, thanks to the go-go entertainment industry, the burgeoning multimedia business, the apparel industry and Pacific Rim trade.

In general, employment in the county is shifting away from the aerospace industry and toward these and other growth areas, including construction, tourism and the catchall category of business services--which owes much of its strength to the boom in temporary help firms--according to Mike Caplis, a state Employment Development Department economist who studies Los Angeles.

Nationally, about 80% of all job growth is expected to be in the great mix of jobs in the service sector--with growth concentrated in business, health care, education, social services, engineering and management fields.

Health-care services and computer-related jobs dominate the list of the 30 fastest-growing occupations predicted through 2005, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the acknowledged national champion of number crunchers.

The aging population and the push to cut health-care costs are expected to create fast-growing demand for workers to care for patients at home--as well as for an array of technicians, assistants and aides. Registered nurses are in high demand in California.

With the continued spread of computer technology a virtual certainty, so is the increasing demand for techmeisters to create, command, connect and repair computers and software. Computer engineers and systems analysts are the third and fourth fastest-growing jobs in the country, the BLS says.

In California, computer engineer is expected to be the fastest growing of the technical or professional occupations, according to the state employment department. The size of the field is expected to more than double by the year 2005, adding about 29,400 jobs, for a total of 56,390.

Jeff Christian is president of Christian & Timbers Inc., a Cleveland-based executive search firm with offices across the country, including Cupertino, Calif. He sounds almost giddy discussing the demand for Internet architects, Webmasters and other programmers who are fluent in “Netspeak” such as Java and HTML, and have a knack for creating content for the exploding Internet.

“We have never seen a hyper-growth industry like the Internet,” said Christian, whose company just published its “Report on Hot Jobs and Not So Hot Jobs” for the second consecutive year.

“There is an incredible demand for people who can build Internet sites, make them interesting, usable and informative, who can solve problems,” he said. “Tons of jobs.”

His report--which he calls “pseudo-scientific,” although based on thousands of interviews with executives and surveys of job ads and other sources--predicts a 200% increase in jobs for Internet software architects in the coming year.

A local twist in the computer-related job market comes with a slap on the wrist for those who think computer work is for nerds.

Says Steve Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, “Southern California [special effects] companies are desperately searching everywhere in the world for animators. There is an incredible shortage of people who can combine art skills with computer skills.”

Motion pictures and television activities--the main component of the entertainment industry--have added about 120,000 jobs since 1990, according to some estimates.

“Besides the producers, directors and actors that everyone knows about, they use clerical help, office staff, accountants, and lots of technicians, animators, sound technicians and editors,” said Irene Basque, a state analyst. “These are bona fide jobs and they’re probably good jobs.”

UCLA’s Lieser points out that job-seekers intent on getting a job in a specific industry shouldn’t give up, if at first they don’t succeed. “If you want to work in the entertainment industry . . . sharpen your skills and make your move when you can.

“If you’re an accountant, go to work for a health-care provider and apply when Disney is hiring. Everyone has the same emphasis on having an accounting system that will save money, and the point is to get into a business that is emphasizing the new methods of cost control and learning that.

“And don’t rule out the public sector,” he said. “There’s tremendous emphasis on controlling costs in county government.”

The jobs with the largest projected growth in California through the year 2005: Waiters and waitresses take the No. 1 spot, followed by general managers and top executives, whose ranks are expected to reach nearly half a million, adding another 110,000 by 2005.

Others run the gamut, from sales clerks and cashiers to nurses, truck drivers, accountants and auditors. Teachers of all sorts--preschool, kindergarten, elementary, secondary and special education--will be in great demand as state mandates to beef up education are carried out.

High-paying professional jobs for engineers, lawyers, physicians, surgeons and accountants will grow alongside those for janitors, cooks, carpenters, car mechanics, security guards and corrections officers, according to state research.

Other promising careers include financial services, such as managing securities, stocks and bonds and pension funds, says Lieser. As people become more actively involved in managing their investments, there’s an increased demand for professionals able to help them do so, he said.

“Even banks shouldn’t be ruled out,” he said. “Yes, the overall numbers show they’re shrinking, but at the same time, there’s lots of turnover. Rapid change may not create growth overall, but it does create jobs.”

Some jobs whose prospects appear to be dimmed by technological change include typists, bank tellers, postal carriers, gas station attendants, switchboard operators, machine tool cutting operators and paste-up artists--who are already being replaced by computer systems used to layout the pages of newspapers and magazines.

Don’t let obsolescence happen to you, experts warn. “If there’s one message that comes through, it’s that you’ve got to be computer literate, even for manufacturing jobs,” said Jack Kyser of the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles. “It’s an increasingly technical world.

“And the [Southern California] job market is still very competitive,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there looking for work.”