Essential public jobs will grow, others will fall

The next 25 years will bring slowed growth to government-sector jobs in Nassau and Suffolk counties, but public service will remain a major piece of Long Island's employment puzzle, economists and labor experts believe.

Police, elder-care workers and teachers will remain in demand, but jobs such as public maintenance workers and parks department employees will fall victim to privatization and layoffs, experts said.

Government employs 209,300 Long Island workers, making it the second largest employment sector on the Island, according to statistics provided by the Long Island Regional Planning Council. Only education and health services - which also include public workers - employs more people, the planning council said.

The budget squeeze

Professional and business service jobs, expected to be the dominant sector by 2035, will also grow at a far more rapid rate than government jobs over the next 25 years - 53 percent compared with 6 percent, the projections state.

"I don't see government disappearing - I see fewer people employed," said Carl Figliola, chairman of C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University's department of health care and public administration.

As a growing taxpayer revolt pressures governments to downsize and cut back, public jobs will fall victim to tight budgets, declining tax revenues and a trend toward consolidating levels of government, experts said. Those trends are evidenced by Gov. David A. Paterson's September call for New York State to shed 2,000 jobs by year's end.

But a need to provide social services for retiring baby boomers will provide job opportunities in the public sector, said Dr. Gregory DeFreitas, director of the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy at Hofstra University.

Quality-of-life jobs

Local governments also will need to maintain law enforcement and public amenities to attract home buyers, which will necessitate jobs, DeFreitas said.

"If we don't keep these things up, we shoot ourselves in the foot," he said. "We need to be very careful that we continue our basic services and enhance them, and that's going to create a need for a number of public-sector workers."

Government job salaries could also see slower growth in the face of tough fiscal times, said Ilene Nathanson, a professor of social work at C.W. Post.

The average government worker's salary on Long Island rose 36 percent to $62,049 from 2000 to 2009, compared with $48,745 in the private sector, which grew 29 percent, according to state Labor Department statistics. That pace might not be sustainable, Nathanson said.

"There will be jobs - but they might not pay what they paid," she said.

Jerry Laricchiuta, president of the Civil Service Employees Association Local 830 - which represents about 10,000 Nassau County workers - said tough budget years have caused the county to shed nonessential jobs, and that trend should continue. The Nassau Parks Department employed 1,200 people in 1972, 888 in 1992 and now has 150 workers, county officials said.

But the number of workers who handle key infrastructure - sewer workers, 911 operators and crossing guards - should hold steady, Laricchiuta said.