The New Service Class

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Meanwhile, the service sector itself is constantly generating new jobs. Realizing that personal computers were changing the way people work and play, Bob Zyontz and Larry Trink quit comfortable jobs in advertising agencies in 1986 to try to cash in on the new technology. Today their New Jersey-based firm, Princeton Direct, has $6 million in revenues and 14 employees engaged in the business of putting multimedia catalogs and other marketing material on diskettes and CD-ROMs. To keep up with the workload, Zyontz and Trink two years ago brought in computer expert and psychologist Jeff Friedman as a third partner.

Other new firms are helping to repair crack-ups in the financial industry. Tim Scala and Ken Jingozian left banking jobs last year to become self-styled derivatives investigators -- experts who advise clients on how to cope with the risks of those securities. Their timing was uncanny: soon after Scala and Jingozian created their New York City-based firm, Treasury Resources Consulting and Investigations, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and sent the value of many derivatives plunging. Their phone has hardly stopped ringing. Says Jingozian: "The entire derivatives market has taken a quantum leap in complexity and sophistication. As a result, the ability of senior management and the back office to understand it has become more difficult."

As financial services have become more complex, companies have created new jobs requiring new skills. Fidelity Investments, the mutual-fund giant with more than $200 billion under management, has been opening as many as four new investment centers a year and bringing in about 100 people to staff them. Many are recent college graduates. The newcomers learn to field virtually any question about Fidelity products and can double salaries that start at about $20,000 within four years.

Retailers too are hunting for skilled sales personnel to explain sophisticated products. Home Depot is increasingly turning to design-school graduates to work in its new line of Expo stores, which will cater to customers building new houses. The company has already hired armies of carpenters, electricians and other craftsmen to take the angst out of shopping as the do-it-yourself chain has expanded to more than 300 outlets. Home Depot went farther afield to hire Larry Wells, 43, who lost his $60,000-a-year job as an Eastern Airlines pilot when that carrier went out of business in 1991. A do-it-yourself remodeler, Wells started as a floor salesperson in Atlanta for less than a third of his pilot's salary and has since become a district installation manager. Of his current salary he will only say that it is "certainly reasonable."

Some of the growth in service jobs has helped narrow the pay gap between men and women.While women made 34% less than men in median weekly earnings in ! 1983, the differential closed to 25% last year. That's partly because expanding fields such as health care and education have added numerous nurses, teachers and librarians -- jobs that are still mostly held by women.