LABOR : Job Growth Expected to Slow Over Rest of Decade, Forecast Says

A new forecast shows that job growth will slow in Orange County over much of the rest of the decade.

“We’re no longer in a fast-growth mode,” says Eleanor Jordan, the state labor market analyst who prepared the report.

“Our economy is definitely maturing.”

According to the forecast by the state Employment Development Department, employment will have grown 5.7% between last year and 1998. In actual numbers, that is 64,500 new jobs for a total of nearly 1.2 million.

That rounds off to about 1% growth in jobs a year, far slower than the 2% or so Orange County became accustomed to in the booming 1980s.

The big gainers:

Retail trade, predicted to rise 13,000 jobs, to 214,000--not terribly surprising given the importance of stores and malls to the county’s economy. That would be a gain of nearly 7%.

Services, once again not surprising because service jobs are growing around the nation. The state predicts service businesses will gain 30,000 jobs here by 1998, rising to 349,000, a gain of nearly 10%. (Services include everything from high-paying jobs in businesses like consulting and law to lower-wage jobs--the majority--like hotel chambermaids.)

State and local government will add 9,500 jobs, for a total of 122,000 and a gain of more than 8%.

Losers? Only one big one, but it’s an important one: manufacturing. No surprises here, either. Factory employment around the nation has been losing ground year after year.

All the losses will be in durable-goods manufacturing, mostly defense products. Makers of missiles and radar and the like will lose another 5,500 jobs, to drop nearly 4% to 146,000.

Slower job growth could very likely be the new long-term trend in the county, says Jordan, the labor market analyst. “It all depends,” she says, “on a lot of unanswered questions--things like what effect NAFTA is likely to have, and the impact of national health insurance.”