Knowledge is power-especially in a tight labor market.
Knowing labor force demographics, the growth industries and the occupations that will be adding the most jobs is knowledge that’s basic to being in charge of your career.
The ever-reliable U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is galloping to your rescue with its projections through 2005.
It recently analyzed the 1992 labor force of 127 million people and projected what most likely will be happening from now until 2005, when there will be 150 million workers.
The first thing is that there will be an 18.5 percent increase in workers, compared to the 21 percent increase from 1979 to 1992. That means, job creation is slowing.
Other findings:
– Service-producing industries will create almost all the job growth. In the goods-producing sector, only construction will add jobs.
– Manufacturing will continue to decline but still will account for one out of seven jobs.
– One out of every three jobs will be in health, business and social services.
“There really aren’t any big surprises,” said Lois Orr, Midwest regional commissioner for the bureau. “We are seeing a continuation of past trends with respect to growth industries and growth occupations. If you’re attuned to the current labor market, these projections will reinforce what you already have in mind.”
However, the economist adds, jobs in social services, such as residential care and home health, have “stepped up.”
Residential care is the fastest-expanding industry, with a projected job growth of 150 percent. Computer and data-processing services will leap up by 96 percent; health services, 89 percent; child-care services, 73 percent; and business services, 71 percent.
“There’s been a dramatic growth in business services over the past decade because firms are deciding to buy rather than `make’ such things as legal services, mail services and marketing,” Orr said.
The next five fastest-growing industries are management and public relations; social services; passenger transportation arrangement; equipment leasing; and accounting and auditing.
As far as occupations go, the top six fastest-growing are home health aides, which will increase 138 percent; human services workers, 136 percent; personal and home care aides, 130 percent; computer engineers, 112 percent; systems analysts, 110 percent; and physical therapists’ assistants, 93 percent.
After those come physical therapists, paralegals, teachers and medical assistants.
“Except for systems analysts, the fastest growing industries and occupations are not the same as the occupations adding the most jobs,” Orr pointed out.
No. 1 in real numbers of new hires will be retail sales, expected to add 786,000 jobs. Registered nurses will add 765,000; cashiers, 670,000; general office clerks, 654,000; and truck drivers, 648,000.
Waiters will add 637,000; nursing aides and orderlies, 594,000; janitors and cleaners, 548,000; food preparation workers, 524,000; and systems analysts, 501,000.
Smart job-seekers also need to know changing patterns of immigration, birth rates and labor force participation.
Here are the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections:
– Hispanics, Asians and other races will increase in number much faster than blacks and white non-Hispanics. Blacks will increase faster than white non-Hispanics.
– By 2005, Hispanics in the labor force will nearly equal non-Hispanic blacks.
– The number of women in the work force will grow faster than that of men.
– The number of workers age 45 to 54 will increase three times faster than the labor force as a whole.
“The projections show a consistent pattern at two poles-professional jobs and low-wage jobs,” said Jack Metzgar, founder of the private, nonprofit Midwest Center for Labor Research and associate professor of humanities at Roosevelt University. “The middle-range jobs are not there.”
He adds that “the way the economy is headed is that some high-wage jobs are increasing, but the proliferation of low-wage jobs is increasing even more quickly.”
Metzgar is concerned about this stratification. “What I get depressed about,” he said, “is that workers in low-skilled jobs have such little capacity to earn a better wage. There is nothing wrong with these jobs, but they should provide decent wages and working conditions-and that won’t happen unless people organize into unions.”
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Carol Kleiman’s columns appear in the Tribune on Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday.
