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Show mm- ' - -; - - r EMPLOYMENT PATTERNS FOR THE 1980's A study of likely employment Changes for the decade ending at 1990 has been made by the U.S. Department of Labor, revealing some probable trends that should be of considerable interest to businessmen, unions, and to the nation's workers themselves. Of primary significance is the basic premise that close to 20 million completely com-pletely new jobs are expected to be created within our economy by the end of the current decade. This prediction may come as a surprise to some economic observers who continue to look for widening displacement of employees in many fields by streamlined technologies. While the Department admits that employment expansion may be slowed in some manufacturing lines because of improved production processes and more moderate growth, the overall impact should not be sufficient to affect critically the manpower structure. Here are some of the probabilities indicated in the study for the period up to 1990. For example, over half of the 20 million jobs created are likely to occur in white-collar occupations, with the greatest gain in openings totaling some 4.8 million involving clerical workers. As many of 4.7 million new jobs are anticipated by 1990 for professional, technical, and managerial employees. Approximately 1.6 million sales workers should also be added to white-collar rolls. FEWER BLUE-COLLAR BERTHS Blue-collar openings probably will account for about a quarter of the fresh opportunities opened up by the end of the decade, far fewer than those expected ex-pected within the white-collar divisions. Healthy advances should appear in the skilled craft worker group, with the addition of 2.5 million jobs, while operative occupations may well take on some 2.2 million. Employment Em-ployment of nonfarm laborers is not expected to climb by more than about 0.4 million by 1990. LIVELY GAINS FOR SERVICES The Labor Department projects the nation's service workers as the fastest-growing fastest-growing . occupational group for the period ahead. It looks for a 30 percent climb by .1990 with, the addition of 3.8 , million,. nw,,p,pe,njngs.. TJie, situationin farm employment continues to deteriorate for a number of reasons, not least of which is the continuing replacement of humans by steadily more sophisticated agricultural machinery of all types. Such gains in productivity add pressure to the trend toward ever-larger ever-larger farm complexes, which speed the elimination of the smalls at a distressing rate. In many parts of the country there are moves to prevent absorption of rich farm lands by real estate developers, but the process is slow and complicated in most cases. The area of household workers continues to narrow rapidly, and the Department looks for further declines in the number of such openings in this decade. Most of this weakness is attributed at-tributed to the strenuous nature of much of this work as well as the low wages in comparison with many less demanding pursuits. REPLACEMENT NEEDS SIGNIFICANT While only 20 million fresh jobs are projected for this decade, there will of course be demand for a great many men and women to replace those removed from the labor force for one reason or another. Those who die, retire, or quit their posts for personal reasons must often be replaced at once to avoid occupational disruptions. The Department predicts that approximately ap-proximately 47 million job openings will be produced because of such withdrawals, with-drawals, far more than twice the number of naturally created jobs expected ex-pected to be available. There will be openings brought about by these natural manpower losses even in the occupations with little or no prospect of fundamental growth. Therefore, considering the outlook for both expansion and replacement openings fh' the-; course of the new decade' ndw und'ei"way',Jthe manpower situation may be at least moderately optimistic. |