SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Job Market : PART ONE: JOB PROSPECTS : Service Jobs : From bankers to busboys, this is where most of the openings are

Whenever a factory shuts down, it seems, someone observes that the United States is deteriorating into a place where people soon will have to take in laundry, shine shoes or flip burgers to make a living.

But those who make such claims are committing an unfair slander on the emerging service economy, the overwhelming source of new jobs in Southern California and the rest of the nation in recent years.

What is a service job?

Well, nobody has a very good definition. Technically, it’s anything that provides a service, as opposed to such other traditional areas of employment as manufacturing, agriculture and construction. And--criticisms to the contrary--service jobs, just like those they are replacing, pay from minimum wage all the way to six figures or more. The work can be dead-end drudgery or a rewarding challenge, just like anything else.

Indeed, it’s hard to comprehend the tremendous range of occupations considered “services.”

Dishwashers are service employees, as are highly paid restaurant executives. Hospital orderlies toil within the service sector--alongside surgeons and other medical specialists with years of training. Messengers are part of the service economy--as are the attorneys, bankers and accountants whose documents they haul through the city.

For all the debate about services, they’re not very new. Travelers who took the bumpy stagecoach ride into California in the last century and found lodging at roadside inns were participating in an earlier version of the service economy. “Can we live off services?” asked Phillip E. Vincent, a vice president with First Interstate Bancorp. “As an economist, I say it’s been going on for hundreds of years.”

In fact, the vast expansion of services in recent decades may simply reflect economic strength, not weakness. As a society gains wealth, people are able to take care of their basic needs and still have money left over for other things. “As we get richer, we spend more of our income on services,” Vincent pointed out.

Moreover, other forces are propelling the growth of services.

Households with two wage earners often can afford services to lighten their load. That can mean anything from grabbing a bite out after work, instead of preparing dinner in the kitchen, to dropping a young child off at a day-care center in the morning.

What’s more, many services cater to the needs of business, not individuals. Multinational corporations and modest merchants both provide an enormous market for consultants, financial advisers, computer experts and other services. Indeed, business services were second only to retail trade as a source of job growth in Southern California between 1972 and 1986, according to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

A survey of Los Angeles and four neighboring counties by the chamber illustrates the breadth of the service economy. It found, for example, that the area’s major employers included local government, universities, banks, department stores, telephone companies, restaurants and hotel corporations--all services of a sort.

Services are by far the largest--and fastest-growing--employer in Southern California. In Los Angeles County, for example, they now account for 2.9 million out of the 3.9 million jobs.

“In 1986, the biggest employment gains in L.A. County came in the huge category known as services,” observed Jack A. Kyser, chief economist at the chamber.

It would be impossible to summarize the outlook for service occupations across the board. What follows is a glimpse at the jobs outlook in a few popular areas within the growing service sector. (The outlook for some service jobs in the high-paying professions appears on Page 11.)

RETAILING

One way the service economy touches everybody’s life is through retailing, an area that has flourished along with the growth of population and income in Southern California. And that means jobs--an increase in Southern California last year of 45,100.

“Some of the most creative forms of retailing are beginning in California,” said Bernard Codner, director of the Institute of Retail Management at California State University, Los Angeles. “Now, if you start a concept that works in California, it can expand very rapidly in other parts of the country.”

All that adds up to a vibrant economic sector that is sure to share in the continued growth of the region. Retail sales includes everything from small specialty shops to such big department stores as the Broadway, with 14,500 employees at 43 stores and several clearance centers in Southern California. It entails virtually everything consumers buy, from the necessities of life to the luxuries.

The biggest retail stores employ a diverse work force that includes salespeople, managers, buyers, finance experts and those in marketing and promotion.

At the Broadway, for instance, the most acute need is for salespeople, despite a force that numbers 7,500. “I don’t see any diminished demand for good people,” said Robert A. Dourian, Broadway’s executive vice president for personnel. “We fully expect to be hiring a significant number of people to bring into our organization.”

Dourian declined to say how much Broadway pays its salespeople but acknowledged that it can vary widely between $6 and $12 or more per hour with commissions.

Throughout the industry, retail-management graduates typically start out in the $18,000 to $24,000 range, salaries that might double or triple in several years as they scale the managerial ranks. “It’s like athletics,” observed Codner. “If you perform, you do well.”

GOVERNMENT

When it comes to ranking employers by size, look outside the private sector: Government is first on the list. The federal government employs 84,000 people in Los Angeles and Orange counties alone. County government is the single largest employer in Los Angeles, with some 75,000 workers. The City of Los Angeles has some 35,000 on the payroll.

And that’s not counting the many thousands who toil for the state and numerous other cities and counties in Southern California.

The hiring outlook is nonetheless mixed. Don Deise, senior assistant administrative officer with Los Angeles County, said budget problems could put a clamp on hiring for many kinds of jobs. Nonetheless, qualified people still have a chance to be hired in such critical areas as law enforcement, fire protection, public health and certain data-processing jobs.

“We can’t let our staffing slip too much and still provide the service we have to,” he said.

“We’re always recruiting on a national basis for engineers,” added Jack Driscoll, general manager of the city’s personnel department, pointing out that entry-level pay for the qualified ranges from $29,000 to $36,000.

Taking a broader view, the most promising area in the public sector may be that of the “new collar” occupations--such as X-ray technicians or jobs that involve compiling records in computers--positions that aren’t traditionally considered blue- or white-collar.

Indeed, it’s hard to envision government retrenching too much in a region that’s expanding as fast as Southern California. Vernon Watkins, an official in Los Angeles with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said of the opportunities: “We’re in a growth area.”

HOSPITALITY

Nowhere have changes in life style made a bigger difference than in such businesses as restaurants and hotels. Eating out and vacationing, once rare luxuries, have become routine--especially for two-income couples. This includes not only the younger yuppies but the booming market of active senior citizens.

“People are dining out more. They have more money available for things like vacations,” said Robert W. Small, acting director of the Center for Hospitality Management at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. “So the industry is in a growth pattern.”

Corporations that own hotels, restaurants and nightclubs hire for a broad spectrum of jobs, from top managers with financial training to gourmet chefs to lower-level service workers. Small, who declared that “the amount of job opportunities out there is tremendous,” said that graduates from his program typically start out at entry-level management jobs paying from $17,000 to $21,000.

He added that fast-food companies don’t just parcel out the food quicker: They sometimes provide a faster track to financial success than more established restaurants or hotels. In the industry in general, young executives who do well may move into the $30,000 to $50,000 salary range within five years, he said.

And demand for talented employees seems to be outpacing the pool of recruits. “The industry as a whole has a scarcity of talent at all levels,” said Susan Bastianello, director of recruitment for Hilton Hotels, based in Beverly Hills. “There is a real lack of manpower.”

To complicate matters, industry executives are bracing for a scarcity of new blood in light of the fact that young people make up a shrinking proportion of the overall population.

“We foresee labor shortages in Southern California,” said Stephen F. Joyce, vice president for human resources at Denny’s Inc., which has 157 company-owned restaurants in Southern California, in addition to its Winchell’s Donut House and El Pollo Loco outlets. “And I think all of our competitors are probably facing the same problem.”

EDUCATION

Education is an often overlooked but far-reaching part of the service economy. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, encompasses 700 square miles and has 57,000 employees, making it the third-largest source of jobs in the entire metropolitan area.

Those jobs run the gamut from teachers to custodians, psychologists to cafeteria workers, bus drivers to police.

“Education is a big business,” said Joy Carter, manager of special services for the Orange County Department of Education. “In many smaller communities you’ll find that the school district is the biggest employer--by far.”

And the largest group of school employees, of course, is the teachers. The demand to hire them, their working conditions and pay vary widely, reflecting the diverse needs of different communities.

“There is a significant teacher shortage in several subject areas in California right now,” said Robert W. Gartin, chief operating officer of California Educational Personnel Services, a Sacramento firm that helps place teachers.

In Los Angeles, for example, where there is a lot of immigration, the schools need teachers who can speak Spanish and, to a lesser degree, Cantonese, Korean and Vietnamese, said Kathleen Price, administrative consultant in the district’s personnel division.

Also sought are teachers who specialize in learning disabilities and those who can teach high school mathematics and science. Price estimated that the Los Angeles schools would require an additional 2,000 teachers this year to meet the demands of enrollment growth and normal attrition.

In Orange County, demand for teachers among the 28 school districts is particularly keen for those trained to work with the handicapped, including problems with eyesight and speech, Price said. Bilingual skills are needed in such places as Santa Ana and Garden Grove. In any case, a teaching force of 25,000 guarantees that natural turnover will create openings.

“Orange County will definitely be hiring,” Price continued. “But it depends where you go how much of a demand there will be. . . . Right next to Capistrano, which is a major growth district, is Laguna Beach--and families with children just can’t afford to live there, so enrollment is declining.”

Pay varies, too. To give a couple of examples, in Los Angeles, as of April, teaching salaries started at about $22,300. For some teachers with advanced degrees, salaries go up to $41,000. In Orange County, teachers’ pay starts at about $16,600, increasing to about $37,800.

MOTION PICTURES AND TELEVISION

OK. So maybe it’s glamour your after. L.A. is the center of the movie biz, after all. Maybe you envision instant wealth and celebrity. Hooray for Hollywood.

Think again.

“Obviously, the talent pool grossly exceeds the employment opportunities,” said Mark Locher, a spokesman for the Screen Actors Guild, which represents on-screen performers. “The place is beyond saturated with actors.”

The work--on and off camera--tends to be free-lance, temporary and hard to get. That’s whether you’re an actor or a grip (a type of carpenter), a director, an extra or a powder person (specializing in explosives).

Statistics by the Chamber of Commerce show that local employment in motion picture and television production and distribution dropped by 1,000 last year, for a local work force of 64,000.

To be sure, the facts have both an upside and a downside. On the negative:

Studios are engaged in a trend toward production outside Southern California, both in feature films and television series.

Only about 20% of the Screen Actors Guild’s 66,000 members--about half of whom live in Southern California--are believed to make more than $20,000 through their craft.

International competition is taking a toll on employment. Southern California has lost some 750 film laboratory-related jobs in recent years, largely to lower-cost Canadian companies.

But there’s good news, too. Film production locally is up over previous years, according to Locher, boosted in part by the growing market for videocassettes. And that means opportunity for all kinds of jobs required on a set, from leading actors to wardrobe specialists. What’s more, new technologies in lighting, taping and other areas bring the promise of fortune for the innovative.

For those who get work, the pay ranges from solidly middle class to lucrative. The Screen Actors Guild’s one-day minimum is $379. For the stage employees--those who perform various crafts--hourly pay can range anywhere from about $12.50 to more than $17.