Move to service industries will continue

Many future employment trends already have taken shape, but Quad-Cities experts agree the biggest expansion will come in the service industry.

``Expansion in the service sector will mean a shrinking of the semi-skilled work force,'' said William Conway, a retired Augustana College economics professor. ``This is nothing new, but it is a continuing trend.

``The commerce department is saying the trend will continue of heavy industry declining with the service sector increasing,'' he said.

According to the Illinois Department of Employment Security, there will be more than 5,000 new service jobs in the next 10 years in Rock Island and Henry counties. Those include food service, restaurants, nonprofessional health service, child care, hotel, nursing home and janitorial jobs.

The second-highest growth area is retail trade, with a little more than 2,000 new jobs projected, while manufacturing is expected to create about 1,800 new jobs.

Semi-skilled workers looking for jobs will continue to face growing challenges as assembly line jobs decline, said Sharon De Frieze, executive director of the Quad-City Area Labor Management Council.

``Manufacturing jobs already have changed to a great extend,'' Mrs. De Frieze said. ``As Americans, we need to look at ways to develop more manufacturing jobs. We don't want to become just a service industry.''

Mrs. De Frieze believes the downsizing in manufacturing has ``stabilized,'' but future workers in any industry will need more credentials than ever before.

``It's going to take a minimum of two years of college to even get a foot in the door,'' she said.

The future trend, according to experts, will be the continued expansion of the technology sector which will change the face of many offices and job descriptions.

``What the technology revolution is doing is increasing the demand for gopher jobs and increasing the demand for high-skilled jobs,'' Mr. Conway said. ``It's the repetitive sort of tasks that are becoming less important.''

The high-tech revolution extends to creating more jobs, such as advanced, standardized manufacturing and information-technology specialists, officials said.

``You can't really imagine what'' the new jobs will be, Rick Baker, executive director of the Illinois Quad City Chamber of Commerce, said.

``Fifteen years ago, the job `Webmaster,' you would have looked at them like they were crazy. Technology jobs will continue to grow, and technology in different types of industries because there's so much to know.''

``The demands are so different from 10, 15 years ago. We're getting more and more challenging job opportunities here,'' said John Gardner, retiring president of the Quad-City Development Group.

Jobs of the future will include more advanced manufacturing, which requires high skills and operation of complex machinery, he said. ``We will continue to be strong in metals, metal fabrication. And in plastics, we'll see considerable growth.''

Health care, especially care for older adults, will be another growing field, Mr. Baker said. Other traditional occupations also are expected to bring thousands of jobs to the Illinois Quad-Cities.

Service jobs popping up today run the spectrum from entrepreneur diving, lawn care and hanging Christmas decorations to home health care or even home delivery for groceries, Mrs. De Frieze said. ``People are busier and they don't have the time.''

The old days, with high demand for semi-skilled labor along manufacturing assembly lines, have passed, with machines replacing workers.

``Well-paid blue-collar workers are declining,'' Mr. Conway said, emphasizing the increase in service areas, ranging from food companies to medical fields.

Twenty years ago, he said, manufacturing jobs represented 30 percent of the work force. It's about half that today.

As computers continue to develop, offices will shrink as more people work from their homes, another trend starting to take shape, Mrs. De Frieze said.

Computers, e-mails and fax machines mean many technical jobs, or writing professions, can be done from the home without disruption.

Mrs. De Frieze also predicts e-commerce will create a booming delivery and packaging market, creating new jobs in the nation's warehouses.