The Coming Job Boom

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--TECHNICIANS As machines keep getting more complex, with tiny microprocessors governing their every move, finding enough people to repair and maintain them is becoming harder. Heating and air-conditioning technicians are in high demand. Nationwide there are about 60,000 vacancies for car mechanics, who can earn anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000.

Engineering the Future
Despite the layoffs from busted dotcoms, jobs will be abundant in other areas of technology. Computer storage, enterprise software and semiconductors are still growth areas. Analysts expect corporate information-technology spending to stabilize this year and rebound in 2003.

--ENGINEERS Over the past 15 years, the number of students graduating with a bachelor's degree in engineering dropped 50%, to 12,400. Companies like Texas Instruments are hiring electrical engineers for product-design, sales and marketing departments. Other engineers--software, mechanical, aerospace, civil and structural--are also hot properties.

--COMPUTER MONITORS Computer-related jobs will be among the fastest growing in the next decade. Leading the way will be those key employees who help large companies maintain their daunting tangles of technology, from system analysts and support specialists to database administrators.

The Desk Set
Thousands of investment bankers, consultants and lawyers have become casualties of the latest round of corporate downsizing. But the long-range picture looks better. As baby boomers scale back their time at the office to concentrate on other activities, from golf to philanthropy, corporate America will be desperate to find qualified managers and executives as well as support staff, from administrative assistants to paralegals.

--FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING H&R Block has been busy hiring 1,200 financial advisers and marketing staff members as it broadens its tax-preparing business. Financial-services firms continue to look for financial planners and asset managers. Despite their role at Enron and in other corporate scandals this year, accounting and auditing are especially attractive fields, expected to grow nearly 20% in the next decade.

--ENERGY The oil, gas and utility sector is bringing on finance and marketing graduates to help navigate deregulation. Companies such as TXU, Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries are still hiring. A graying work force means the industry also needs to find a new generation of petroleum engineers, geologists and geophysicists.

To keep pace in today's fast-moving economy, job hunters must be, above all, flexible. Steve Reyna, 28, who four years ago went to work at TDIndustries, a Dallas-based mechanical contractor that specializes in air-conditioning and plumbing projects for high-tech companies, knows this better than most. After training as a sheet-metal technician, Reyna moved on to work in the so-called clean rooms of semiconductor companies, learning a little welding and plumbing along the way. Just one of more than 1,300 employees at TDIndustries who are rigorously cross-trained, Reyna is now ready to work "wherever they need me." If the number crunchers turn out to be right, that could soon mean just about everywhere.