ALL THEY WANT: A STEADY JOB.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

They don't want much, at least not in a material sense.

Jim seeks to restore his lost sense of independence.

Robert longs for some financial security and the renewed respect of his sons.

And John craves the privacy of his own place.

The key to achieving such modest dreams, say these San Fernando Valley area men, all casualties of the most withering regional economic slump since the Great Depression, is a steady job.

Just a job.

Work isn't what it used to be for many in the Valley. Lifetime employment, economic security and ever-rising incomes are a thing of the past.

The changes in the workplace are the subject of a sweeping new survey by The Field Institute. In an extensive poll of 2,310 Californians, the report assesses the aspirations and anxieties of the Golden State's labor force.

The Daily News will publish the results of that survey in a three-day series of reports beginning Monday, Labor Day.

For displaced workers cast adrift during uncertain economic times, the search for gainful employment can be a humbling exercise.

It is an experience shared at Experience Unlimited, a nonprofit North Hollywood job club sponsored by the state Employment Development Department.

``I'm willing to take a third of what I made before. I'll work for what I made 20 or 30 years ago,'' said Robert, 56, a financial analyst with a master's degree on his resume.

He lost a $124,000-a-year executive job in 1992 when the savings and loan industry collapsed. He hasn't worked full time since.

Now Robert scratches out a living with intermittent work arranging mortgages. Like some others interviewed for this article, he doesn't want his last name published. He fears it would put that part-time job in jeopardy.

It's been a discouraging search for all three men, but in their opinion, Southern California is still the promised land. The sun shines, the economy has reinvented itself and is finally on the mend.

But like hundreds of other workers battered by the recession, they are facing the future with diminished expectations.

On the horizon, as the next century fast approaches, are some of the biggest workplace changes since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Workers can expect to change jobs, and even careers, several times. Security might not be found in a large corporate cocoon. A variety of skills will be needed to survive in a highly competitive workplace.

Los Angeles author Michael Levine interviewed nearly 300 executives in a wide range of fields and analyzed U.S. Department of Labor statistics to get a sense of what's in store for the work force of tomorrow.

``People who are creative and nimble and responsive will fare much better than those narrowly trained,'' Levine said.

That seems painfully apparent to Valley workers thrown overboard by the downsized aerospace industry and the demise of Van Nuys' General Motors plant.

Future job satisfaction will include more than what's in the pay envelope.

``You need to see jobs in terms of what they can give you,'' Levine said.

He says the best fields to consider include computer animation, computer information specialist, mutual fund manager, industrial environmentalist, family doctor and management consultant.

Levine recommends avoiding accounting, being a bank teller, telephone operator, factory worker, real estate agent or midlevel manager.

These kinds of jobs were once the foundation of the local economy.

But no more.

Los Angeles and Orange counties lost nearly half a million jobs in the past five years. The combined total is more than the state lost during the recession.

Employment for the region peaked at 4.13 million jobs in 1990. By July's end that number had edged back up to 3.83 million, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County.

The vast majority of those losses came in durable goods manufacturing and finance.

And while California has begun to generate jobs at a faster clip than the nation, slower growth seems to be in store for the Los Angeles area.

The region's annual job growth is forecast to average about 1.4 percent through 2000. But pre-recession employment levels won't be reached until 2002, predicts the ``Southeast Los Angeles County Defense Adjustment Plan'' prepared for the county by the Economic Roundtable, a Los Angeles-based research group.

Of the 300,000 jobs expected to be created in the next 3-1/2 years, nearly all will come from the trade and services sectors.

Other studies also have substantiated the atrophying of the once-muscular aerospace and defense industry. The RAND Corp., the Santa Monica think tank, concluded in a report for the Defense Department that one in three of California's civilian aerospace jobs has disappeared since 1989.

And an Economic Roundtable-Rutgers University study found that this industry's shrinkage is eroding the purchasing power of middle-class wage earners in the Los Angeles area.

Consider the downsizing at Century City-basedNorthrop Grumman Corp., the big aerospace and defense contractor.

The company's California employment peaked in 1987 at 35,300 workers, most of them in the Los Angeles area. By the end of last year it had dwindled to 17,200.

An additional 2,000 jobs are expected to be trimmed this year, said company spokesman Terry Clawson.

``It's being driven at this point by the declining work on the B-2 stealth bomber,'' Clawson said. ``And we are really continuing to be primarily a defense contractor.''

Even so, Clawson notes that Northrop is expanding its commercial aircraft work. But it will add only about 20E0 jobs, not nearly enough to make up for the cuts.

That can't be encouraging news for John Cowen, 49, of Castaic.

He's an electronic design engineer who has not worked in that field since the halcyon days of 1987. Cowen figures he's a victim of unfortunate timing. He spent a couple of years working on a project unrelated to design and when it was finished Cowen was out of work.

He wasn't current with new design procedures and the aerospace slump hit before he could catch up.

Since then he's been moonlighting as an electrical contractor.

``I've been working part time doing odd jobs and that kind of thing,'' he said. ``I've just been scrimping by on some electrical contracting. But it's very unreliable, you might say.''

Cowen has seen his savings disappear and he's had to move in with some roommates.

He can't wait to get his own place again, but that won't happen until he finds a job.

Surprisingly, he's not bitter. Nor is he discouraged.

``I think it's getting better,'' he said of the job search. ``I see more ads in the paper and I see more things coming here to the job club.''

This is not the first time that the region's economy has transformed itself.

Through the early decades of the 1900s, sprawling ranches and a thriving agricultural industry dominated the Valley. Then, in 1947, America's No. 1 industrial giant - GM - built an assembly plant in Van Nuys. It was the source of thousands of jobs - sons followed their fathers to work there - until the plant closed in 1992.

That, combined with the aerospace decline and a real estate market mired in an equity shedding slump, helped push unemployment to a nine-year high.

It's thrown Burbank resident Jim Emanuel, 48, through an economic loop and forced him to move back in with his parents, who had some health problems and needed his care.

Emanuel lost his purchasing agent job with a Burbank aerospace company in 1991 and took a new job, and a pay cut, driving an airport shuttle van. In April 19E95 he went back to work as a buyer in the aerospace industry but lost that job in January.

Emanuel is also optimistic about finding work, and he's encouraged about the region's renewed economic vigor. But now he's not confining his search to just one sector.

``I feel confident enough in my skill that I'm not going to limit myself,'' he said. ``I do like the procurement field and customer service, anything that has to do with people. I like working with people. And I feel that I have pretty good negotiating skills. And I'm a nice guy.''

Meanwhile, Robert, the financial analyst, faces the new economic order with trepidation.

His retirement savings is gone, the house in Tarzana the six-figure salary once financed teeters on foreclosure, his marriage is strained and he feels alienated from his two sons, both of whom are in college.

``Between my age and the kind of dollar level and job content level I held previously I'm not too hireable,'' he said. ``I'm not giving up getting back into something I'm trained for. But I've got to work until the day I die. I'll still be working at 80, if I live that long.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo: Joanne Lawrence, left, John Cowan and Jim Emanuel search comp uter banks at Experience Unlimited, a North Hollywood job club, for jobs.

Phil McCarten/Daily News