WHERE THE JOBS ARE

Want a job? tool-and-die companies in Toledo, Ohio, are so strapped for skilled help that they're recruiting in Russia, where good workers are shivering and unemployed. Or think about Silicon Valley, where two jobs await every qualified applicant and an astonishing 18,000 technical and managerial slots remain unfilled. If you always wanted to be in show business, here's your big chance: booming Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, will together add more than 30,000 jobs, from top management to ticket takers, over the next three years. "I've got opportunity everywhere," says John Sprouls, vice president for human resources at Universal Studios.

So, suddenly, do other companies all over the American map. As the new year begins, these superhot job spots are far more than exceptions to the still unrelenting rule of frequent downsizing. They reflect a tireless expansion and fundamental shifts in the workplace that have created more than 11 million new jobs since 1991, slashed unemployment to 5.3% and turned the country into the world's hottest job machine. The same forces that have brought high-tech labor shortages to regions from Silicon Valley to Boston's Route 128 corridor are fast transforming Rocky Mountain states from energy, ranching and mining to hubs for job-rich information industries. In parts of the Midwest, manufacturers that survived the industrial meltdown of the past two decades are now the most competitive exporters on earth.

"This is a huge, huge revolution, like the advent of railroads and air travel," says Allen Sinai, the president and chief global economist for Primark Decision Economics in Boston. "Future economic historians will write about this as a major event in our history." Concurs Joseph Stiglitz, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers: "In the 19th century, the frontier of America was moving from agriculture to manufacturing. Today the frontier is going from manufacturing to services and technology, much of which can be exported." While this revolution has been under way since the 1960s, technology keeps accelerating the pace of change and hence the seemingly sudden development of job opportunities in areas such as computer networking.

Yet nerds and computer wonks are hardly the only workers high on employers' wish lists. With them come demands for accountants and support staff; school districts need more teachers; hospitals are crying for nurses and physical therapists. In Minneapolis companies are hiring directly from temporary help agencies--and paying fat premiums to do so. Skilled workers from carpenters to croupiers are in high demand as the good times have brought booms--and frequent overcrowding--to housing markets and entertainment centers from the casinos of Las Vegas and, yes, St. Louis, Missouri, to the theme parks of Orlando.