County Employers’ Wish List on Workers Is Goal of Jobs Survey : Employment: About 750 businesses will receive questionnaires on entry-level, skilled and semiskilled workers in the first such study.
They know that counter helpers at fast-food restaurants are in short supply and will continue to be so, but they’re no longer all that sure about electronics assemblers.
So to find out--and to gauge industry’s wants and needs for entry-level, skilled and semiskilled employees in Orange County for the next three years--state and local employment officials are about to launch a countywide job survey.
Initially, some 750 employers will receive the four-page questionnaires to be mailed out within the next few weeks by the Private Industry Council of Orange County, a job-training agency funded by both the state and federal governments.
If needed to achieve a 50% response rate for each of the survey’s 25 employment categories, up to 1,500 questionnaires might ultimately be sent out, according to Eleanor Jordan, Orange County labor market analyst with the state Employment Development Department. The EDD is co-sponsoring the survey with the Private Industry Council.
The study, the first in what will be an annual survey program, seeks information about jobs that Jordan and West described as mainly hourly positions for which high school, trade school or two-year college diplomas are the maximum educational requirement.
“We are concentrating in this first one on what are basically entry-level jobs but which pay a living wage,” Jordan explained.
“In later surveys,” she added, “we might include more professional-level occupations, or even some highly specialized job categories. In San Mateo County, for example, they’re doing their third survey and are seeking information this year on jobs pertinent to the airline industry. That’s because they are close to San Francisco International Airport,” and county job officials suspect that there is a demand for airline industry-related employment and employment training programs.
“Suspect” is the operative word in the survey program. Officials are using the study in part to validate suspicions about which industry segments are on the upswing and which are in decline.
In job-placement and employment-training circles in Orange County, for instance, there “is a lot of disagreement about the electronics-assembly industry and whether it is declining,” said Margo West, the Private Industry Council’s survey coordinator.
“So that’s one job category we want to make sure we ask about,” she said.
Conversely, there has been so much publicity about the lack of skilled secretaries and unskilled fast-food restaurant workers in the county that there is not much need to ask employers about those types of jobs, Jordan said.
Included in the 25 types of jobs for which employers’ hiring plans are being solicited are bus drivers, auto mechanics, restaurant cooks, shipping clerks, hotel desk clerks, medical and dental assistants, licensed vocational nurses, computer operators, typists, sales representatives, carpenters and plumbers.
The survey asks employers how many of a particular type of employee they have and how many they need; how they recruit and what they pay; how difficult it is to find experienced applicants; what skills they would like applicants to have, and what skills recently hired employees have lacked.
The survey also asks--after assuring the employer that all answers are confidential--how many employees stay on the job for three years or more, what kind of fringe benefits are offered, and whether employment in the specific occupation is expected to grow or shrink over the next three years.
Once the questionnaires are returned, the data will be compiled and published as the Orange County Labor Market Survey. The target date for publication “is sometime in the fall . . . about the same time we start preparing the questionnaires for the second survey,” Jordan said.
The survey will provide schools, employers and training programs with information about which jobs are in demand and which are not; about starting wages; the chances for promotion and the types of fringe benefits available within certain occupations, and about what skills are needed and which are lacking.
The labor market survey is part of a $3.3-million statewide program, launched in 1986 in San Mateo County, that ultimately will develop annual labor pool and wage information for the 26 counties that account for 70% of the labor force in the state, Jordan said.
So far, only seven counties have been surveyed and only two, Los Angeles and San Diego, are in Southern California. Orange County currently is scheduled to be the only other Southland county in the program.
LABOR MARKET INFORMATION PROGRAM
The state Employment Development Department plans to survey Orange County businesses on their labor needs in certain job categories. The survey will seek information on training and experience, employer requirements, job outlook, wages and where the jobs are most needed. Among job categories to be included in the survey are:
Automobile mechanics
Bus drivers
Cabinet makers
Computer operators
Cooks
Dental assistants
Hotel desk clerks
Licensed vocational nurses
Medical records technicians
Nurses, registered
Plumbers
Sales representatives
Shipping clerks
Source: State Employment Development Department
