Southern California Job Market : Challenges / Opportunities : Paradox in Defense : The Southland will see a 15% drop in overall employment in the sector by 1992. Still, many firms are still hiring.

Most discussions of defense industry employment in the post-Cold War era revolve around a single word: Layoffs. The guns-and-missiles business, quite simply, is shrinking, and few experts believe that even the Mideast crisis will reverse that trend.

The numbers paint a grim picture. Total employment in the aerospace industry in California, including the civilian and military sectors, is expected to decline nearly 15% to 294,000 by 1992 from 344,000 this year, according to the UCLA Business Forecast for California released this month.

And defense-related employment in the state, which includes all jobs that are directly or indirectly a result of military spending, will decline nearly 11% to 647,000 during the same period from 725,000 this year, according to the economic forecasting firm DRI/McGraw-Hill.

But this contraction isn’t industrywide. Even as defense companies announce layoffs, they are still recruiting college graduates and hiring experienced workers with highly specialized skills.

“It’s a definite paradox,” said Sandy Lechtich, president of National Recruiters in Canoga Park. “There are lots of people being laid off, lots of people who can’t find anything, but there are still a lot of needs in certain areas.”

Many of the current opportunities involve electronics specialties, a reflection of the military’s growing emphasis on electronic warfare and the efforts of some defense firms to diversify into civilian high-tech markets. Experts in complex software, microwave radio systems, digital signal processing and satellite communications, for example, are all in demand.

Hughes Aircraft, for one, is recruiting microwave radio experts and other communications engineers to work on civilian air-traffic control systems, even as it pursues a companywide work-force reduction program aimed at eliminating 6,500 jobs.

Skilled production workers with experience in structural assembly, aircraft maintenance and toolmaking are also in short supply. That’s in part because the shrinking defense budget has been accompanied by an unprecedented boom in the demand for new and used commercial aircraft, creating jobs in building or retrofitting airplanes.

Northrop Corp., for example, is cutting its overall payroll by about 3,000, but nonetheless has 400 openings for skilled assembly workers to build B-2 bombers in Palmdale, according to Dave Suydam, vice president for human resources at the B-2 division. In fact, Boeing Co., a subcontractor on the B-2, has dispatched workers from its Seattle plants to work in on the project in Palmdale.

Suydam said the company needs experienced structural mechanics, electrical mechanics, painters and liaison engineers. “If you’re an aircraft worker doing ‘touch-labor,’ then you’re working,” he said.

But landing the available jobs is no easy feat. Companies are looking for recruits with specific skills and are being highly selective. And as the defense companies attempt to pursue commercial work, experience on military projects can even be a disadvantage.

“The military environment is very different,” said Fred Rodriguez, director of employment at Hughes. “The military people are used to working with military specifications, and many of them don’t have the expertise” for civilian projects.

Military specifications often require special materials and extremely exacting standards that are not generally employed in commercial projects. That explains, in part, why Hughes would be laying off electronics engineers from some divisions and hiring outsiders into others.

The attempts by many defense companies to shift their focus to commercial markets will not do much to improve the employment picture, experts agree. McDonnell Douglas has been forced to lay off 8,000 people in Long Beach, despite a record backlog of commercial aircraft orders.

Rodriguez points out that even though Hughes hopes to move to 60% dependence on defense from 80% during the next several years, much of that transition will be brought about by acquisitions.

The model presented by firms that are already diversified is not terribly promising either. Rockwell International, which relies on military contracts for just 25% of its revenue, has had few layoffs among its Southern California work force of 34,000, but employment is not expanding.

Indeed, it appears that from an employment point of view, the defense industry in Southern California will increasingly resemble other industries. Those who get jobs will have top-notch technical skills, good interpersonal skills and an aggressive, well-thought-out approach to job hunting.

Gone are the days of massive employment for all types of workers. “Long term, we’ll see more need for high-tech skills and far less need for basic skills,” said Sal Monaco of DRI/McGraw-Hill. “I just don’t see any prospect that it’s going to take off again.”