Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403150164
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Everybody says they're good for the economy and by golly you can't have enough of them.
What they don't say is exactly what high-tech jobs are. That's because they're like good taste: recognizable, but hard to define concisely .
``People are always asking us for information on high-tech jobs,'' said Joy Boissevain of the Virginia Occupational Information Service in Charlottesville. ``We have to get them to tell us what they mean.''
``High-tech'' is short for high technology. The jobs generally require more than a high school education - sometimes a lot more - and they usually have something to do with computers, science, math and stuff like that.
In fact, Boissevain said, one school of thought holds that high-tech jobs include all that have ``anything to do with computers.''
That can lead to confusion, however. No one would argue that computer and software design is high-tech stuff. But what about the guy who spends his day repetitiously welding transistors onto a board or typing data into a memory? Is that high-tech work?
Common sense says no, but in official statistics, it probably is. If a company is principally involved in making high-tech stuff such as computers or telephones or stereos or fiber optic cable, then even the sales force and custodians go down as high-tech workers.
That's probably not what Roanoke Valley Poll respondents meant when they said the valley needs to attract more high-tech jobs.
It works the other way, too. Computers or other high-tech gizmos can turn up in normally gizmo-free industries such as, say, lumber harvesting.
``There are high-tech jobs and there are high-tech industries,'' Boissevain said, but one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. ``Building computers is high-tech, but they still need janitors.''
Economist William Mezger of the Virginia Employment Commission agrees.
``That's why it's so difficult to come up with a definition,'' he said.
The commission looked into the subject back in the mid-1980s. It concluded that high-tech jobs were most common in communications, research and development work, certain manufacturing and health care. But there remained a lot of fuzzy areas.
For example, what about the orderlies in health care? High tech? Naaah.
Except for obvious cases and broad industry classifications, said Veronica Sadler, an information specialist at the VEC, ``it's pretty much anybody's interpretation.''
The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment said in 1982 that high-tech industries were all those ``engaged in the design, development and introduction of new products and/or innovative manufacturing processes through the systematic application of scientific and technical knowledge.''
In a 1991 article in the U.S. Labor Department's ``Monthly Labor Review,'' the authors said the ``most popular use of the [high-tech] locution'' was to limit it to ``the aerospace, computer, and telecommunications industries.'' Their own decision was to define a high-tech industry as ``one with a significant concentration of R&D employment.''
``I don't think there's going to be a definite answer,'' said the VOIS' Boissevain, showing a gift for understatement.
One thing most do agree on is that high-tech jobs are desirable. They're relatively clean, environmentally speaking, and they pay reasonably well.
In a 1989 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of industries regarded as high-tech, the average annual salary was $34,626. That same year, the average annual pay for all industries, excluding government and education, was $22,302.
The term ``manufacturing'' also turns up often in employment information. It is held to apply to any work that results in the making of a product. That seems clear enough, except when you remember that construction and mining also result in products of a sort.
And, again, not everyone in the factory is involved in making the product. The boss, for example, may make nothing more tangible than golf divots.
Then there's the matter of ``skilled'' and ``unskilled'' labor. What's the difference?
``It's often sort of arbitrary where you draw the line,'' the VEC's Mezger said. ``It may have to do with the time needed to learn the job.''
One rule of thumb is 30 days, he said.
``If the job takes 30 days to learn, it's skilled. If it takes less than 30 days, it's unskilled.''
by CNB