COLUMN ONE : REGIONAL REPORT : Joblessness and Pessimism Grow : Southland industries that seemed healthy until recently are now faltering. Newcomers to the unemployment lines aren’t hopeful about finding work.

As truck driver Dave Brown, 32, lined up to apply for jobless benefits at a San Diego unemployment office one day last week, the cross-country food hauler looked uncomfortably around the quiet room.

“This is such a terrible feeling,” said Brown, who lost his job earlier this month, leaving him out of work for the first time since he started earning a living 12 years ago. “I’m about as close to the economy as a lay person gets, and I think something bad is going to happen soon.”

For Brown and thousands of other Southern Californians caught in the rising tide of unemployment, something bad is already happening.

After creeping upward all summer long, jobless rates jumped in September in all six Southern California counties except Los Angeles, according to figures released Thursday by the state Economic Development Department. Though the unemployment level in Los Angeles County fell to 6.1% from 6.6% in August, it--like the other counties’--was higher than a year ago. Orange County’s rate was 3.8%, the highest level in more than 3 1/2 years.

Most troubling is that fundamental segments of the economy that seemed healthy until recently--manufacturing, services and transportation--now are faltering as an eight-year economic expansion loses steam.

And the outlook is none too bright: Observers from Oxnard to San Diego see the job picture worsening over the next 12 months as the nation slides into a recession that would only deepen if oil prices continue to escalate or if war breaks out in the Middle East.

Nothing brings home the reality of bad economic times like the loss of a job. And recent visits to area unemployment offices found anxious, pessimistic job seekers, acutely aware it was not a good moment to be looking for work.

“I’m seriously thinking of moving East, away from the coast, to find cheaper rents,” said Tami Cunningham, 28, who was laid off earlier this month by an El Toro travel agency only a week after being hired as manager. “Things are just slowing up,” Cunningham said during a wait at the Santa Ana office of the state Employment Development Department. “My roommate’s out of work. “My next door neighbor’s out of work.”

Larry Smith, a design technician laid off a month ago by a San Diego marine engineering firm, said he might have to change professions to get back to work.

With the slowing of growth in defense spending, Smith, 38, had watched his department shrink from 34 workers to three in the space of six months. But Smith--a married father of two with savings enough for just one more mortgage payment--held on “to the bitter end,” getting his walking papers after his firm’s final naval repair contract expired.

“Others saw the writing on the wall but I kept hoping some new contract would come along,” he said during an interview at a San Diego unemployment office. “Nothing shook loose, and so here I am.”

Bill Severn, 24, knows he lost his job this month at the Mandalay Beach Resort in Oxnard because the tourist trade had precipitously declined. What frustrates the Camarillo man, the hotel’s food and beverage room-service manager for 16 months, is the unsettling sense that he is a victim of economic forces beyond his control.

“Frankly, I’m not sure where the economy’s going. You hear so much about Saudi Arabia and the recession,” said Severn, interviewed at the Oxnard unemployment office. “What I’d really like to do is finish my final year at UCLA. But I was a history major. I’d probably have to change that if I want to make myself employable.”

Economists note that unemployment rates in California and nationwide, at 5.8% and 5.7% respectively, do not approach the worst levels seen during the 1981-82 recession, when joblessness exceeded 11%. Many experts hope the current slowdown will be relatively mild--some believe that a recession can be avoided altogether--and that employment trends will not deteriorate much further.

Indeed, the gloom is far from universal in the job market. Certain kinds of jobs continue to be created in abundance in the region, especially in fields that ride the tide of Southern California’s population growth, from accountants to dry cleaners, janitors to retail clerks.

In Los Angeles, even some industrial sectors have added jobs this year, notably food processing and distribution, petroleum manufacturing and air transportation.

But the seepage of job losses beyond the industries that had been suffering in California for a year or more--beyond the collapsing savings and loans, the overbuilt housing market, the belt-tightening aerospace companies--is, undeniably, troubling.

“People in the companies we deal with feel less confident,” said Philip Bohan, economic development manager of the Ventura County Job Training Council, a nonprofit group that trains and places economically disadvantaged workers under the federal Job Training Partnership Act.

“There’s a reduction in anticipated new hires for truck drivers, shipping and receiving people, food services, light manufacturing,” Bohan said. “In the last couple of months, the job orders are down about 30% compared to the same period a year ago.”

Manufacturing layoffs have hit throughout the region. In Oxnard, Raytheon recently shuttered a defense electronics plant employing 400. In Santa Ana, A&E; Systems, which makes awnings and other equipment for recreational vehicles, closed down in August, laying off another 400. In Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, there were fewer manufacturing jobs in August, the last month for which such data is available, than a year before.

George Lopez, 43, interviewed at the North Oxnard unemployment office, had worked three years as an assembler at Everest & Jennings, the Camarillo-based wheelchair manufacturer, when he was laid off in December. Since then, he says, he has been unable to find a job at which he would earn enough to support his wife and three children, including a newborn.

“There are some jobs around, but nobody wants to pay anything,” said Lopez. “I figure I need to make at least $7.50 to $8 (per) hour if we’re going to live at all comfortably. But nobody wants to pay more than $5.50 or $6. I’d like to see them support a family on that.”

Indeed, job hunters throughout the region have fewer and fewer options. Help-wanted advertising, considered a key indicator of hiring, has been declining at all the area’s major newspapers.

For the 13 weeks ended Oct. 7, employment advertising lineage in The Times was down 25% compared to the same period last year. The Orange County Register said its September help-wanted ads were off 25% from the same month in 1989. The San Diego Union reported a 13% drop in help-wanted ads on a year-to-date basis.

“I’m getting worried,” said Manuel Hernandez, 28, who has been looking for work for three months since he quit his job as a busboy at a downtown Los Angeles restaurant rather than take a cut in his already low pay. “I’m looking, but I can’t find anything.”

Jobs in construction--a bellwether industry that grows and contracts with the economy as a whole--have been dwindling all year. Statewide, 24,000 jobs have been lost since February, according to the Construction Industry Research Board in Burbank, and another 60,000--fully 10%--are likely to disappear over the next year.

“Housing is completely shot down. Construction is real slow,” said Roland McReynolds, an out-of-work plumber seeking benefits at the Santa Ana unemployment office. During good times, McReynolds said he typically goes two weeks between jobs. But he now has been unemployed since the end of July.

While others waiting in line had their newspapers open to the help-wanted section, McReynolds scanned his for word of new housing developments. He has made his living installing plumbing in new homes for 25 years, the last eight in Orange County.

But work has never been harder to come by, he said.

There are about 150 additional members of his union, Pipefitters Local 582 in Santa Ana, also looking for work, McReynolds said. Demand for heating and air-conditioning installers is about as low as for plumbers.

White-collar workers are not immune to the downturn.

Standing out amid a sea of faded blue jeans and T-shirts at the unemployment office in Escondido was Craig Lenberg, 40, an out-of-work mortgage banker dressed in a gray suit and tortoise-shell glasses. He is one of 122 Great American Bank employees statewide who have lost their jobs since mid-summer.

Lenberg, who formerly earned a salary of $70,000, says he is still optimistic about his job prospects. But after two frustrating months looking for work, he said he soon may be putting his house in Poway on the market, swimming pool and all.

An unemployment check of $190 per week, said Lenberg, “doesn’t quite cover the bills.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Nancy Rivera Brooks in Los Angeles, Jonathan Gaw in Vista, Anne Michaud in Orange County and Jack Searles in Ventura County.

OUT OF WORK: Unemployment in Orange County rises to its highest level in more than 3 1/2 years. D1

SOUTHLAND UNEMPLOYMENT RATES SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY Annual average 1985: 6.5% 1986: 5.8 1987: 5.2 1988: 5.1 1989: 4.9 Monthly average Sept. ‘89: 5.0% Oct.: 4.5 Nov.: 4.3 Dec.: 4.2 Jan. ‘90: 5.0 Feb.: 4.7 Mar.: 4.6 Apr.: 5.1 May: 5.6 June: 5.8 July: 6.4 Aug.: 5.6 Sept.: 6.5 RIVERSIDE COUNTY Annual average 1985: 8.0% 1986: 7.2 1987: 6.4 1988: 6.7 1989: 6.8 Monthly average Sept. ‘89: 7.7% Oct.: 6.8 Nov.: 6.2 Dec.: 5.9 Jan. ‘90: 6.0 Feb.: 6.5 Mar.: 5.8 Apr.: 6.6 May:7.3 June: 6.9 July: 9.5 Aug.: 8.4 Sept.: 9.3 LOS ANGELES COUNTY Annual average 1985: 7.0% 1986: 6.7 1987: 5.9 1988: 4.9 1989: 4.7 Monthly average Sept. ‘89: 4.8% Oct.: 4.2 Nov.: 5.2 Dec.: 5.0 Jan. ‘90: 5.9 Feb.: 5.5 Mar.: 5.9 Apr.: 5.4 May: 5.4 June: 4.6 July: 5.4 Aug.: 6.6 Sept.: 6.1 SAN DIEGO COUNTY Annual average 1985: 5.3% 1986: 5.0 1987: 4.5 1988: 4.3 1989: 3.9 Monthly average Sept. ‘89: 4.2% Oct.: 3.8 Nov.: 3.5 Dec.: 3.5 Jan. ‘90: 3.8 Feb.: 3.7 Mar.: 3.5 Apr.: 3.9 May: 4.3 June: 4.3 July: 5.0 Aug.: 4.3 Sept.: 5.1 VENTURA COUNTY Annual average 1985: 7.3% 1986: 6.9 1987: 5.5 1988: 5.3 1989: 5.1 Monthly average Sept. ‘89: 5.6% Oct.: 5.0 Nov.: 5.2 Dec.: 4.9 Jan. ‘90: .1 Feb.: 4.4 Mar.: 4.0 Apr.: 4.3 May: 4.8 June: 4.9 July: 6.6 Aug.: 5.9 Sept.: 6.9 ORANGE COUNTY Annual average 1985: 4.4% 1986: 4.0 1987: 3.3 1988: 3.0 1989: 2.9 Monthly average Sept. ‘89: 3.2% Oct.: 2.9 Nov.: 2.6 Dec.: 2.4 Jan. ‘90: 2.9 Feb.: 2.7 Mar.: 2.5 Apr.: 2.9 May: 3.2 June: 3.3 July: 3.6 Aug.: 3.3 Sept.: 3.8 Source: California Employment Development Dept.