Service Economy

AM I THE ONLY one who notices that: 1. Customer service is at an all-time low. You try to call department stores, utilities, companies, etc., and you spend lots of time on your phone and sometimes you can't even get through! You call "information," and the electronic voice can't hear what you're saying. So you repeat and eventually just hang up - but you still get billed. 2. You go to a fast-food chain, and, nine times out of 10, you have to "ask" for ketchup. 3. Your neighborhood pay phone has been ripped off the wall.

"There is no sales tax on clothing in Pennsylvania. " There I was again, sticking my "newsy" nose where it didn't have to go, but seemed headed quite naturally, as I stood behind another customer at a major local department store over the weekend. The customer was buying a pair of gloves, and had questioned the sales clerk when she included 6 percent for Harrisburg on the sales slip. The clerk responded, incredibly, with silence and a shrug, and appeared ready to take the woman's money and be done with it. So I spoke up. "There is no sales tax on clothes in Pennsylvania.

Prospects for luring large manufacturers to the Philadelphia area or any large metropolitan center are dim, according to a new book on the region's economy. Planners and developers in the eight-county area instead should concentrate their efforts on service industries, with an emphasis on legal firms, software and data-processing companies and insurance, the book says. "The region has evolved from an economy that specializes in the production of goods to an economy that specializes in the production of services, especially health care and those services dealing with the administration and development of firms engaged in goods production," says Post-Industrial Philadelphia: Structural Changes in the Metropolitan Economy, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

In the past two decades, Pennsylvania has suffered even more than the rest of the nation as the American Dream gave way to the Workingperson's Nightmare. Only in three states was family income more equally distributed than in Pennsylvania two decades ago (based on comparing family income at the top and in the middle). But by the 1990s, Pennsylvania had slipped to 31st among the 50 states. In the 1980s, households in western Pennsylvania saw their income decline more than in all but two states, Louisiana and West Virginia.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has opened more than three dozen offices and clinics in the suburbs in the last decade. Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems in King of Prussia expanded its workforce to 3,500 people, installing computers in police cruisers and developing complex federal government data networks. Lowe's has built nine stores in the Philadelphia region since 1999, part of the big-box wave of retail outlets. Together, these employers represent the direction of the Philadelphia-area economy in the last decade as it became more service-oriented, more suburban, and more reliant on health care for jobs and wages, according to sweeping new U.S. government figures.

OK, so there's no more shipbuilding on the Delaware River. With the default of Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Inc. this month, county residents can say goodbye to 300 years of seaworthy tradition. They can also say goodbye to a lot of jobs. Or can they? Four days after Penn Ship announced its imminent closing, another major employer opened not four miles upriver, next to Philadelphia International Airport: United Parcel Service. Some might see in this a transition from ships to jets.

Back in the 1800s, the average job had to do with plants or animals. Early in this century, work typically involved things - screws, coal, bobbins, machines. Today, three out of four American workers deal with people. In stores, hospitals, and offices, they're paid not to grow food or manufacture goods but to meet the needs of customers, patients and clients. Instead of turning soil or bending metal, people are spending their days serving one another. It sounds like a utopia of improved human relations and job satisfaction.

Whatever happened to service? Two weeks ago, I had blood work done at my doctor's office. Since adjustments in my medication depended on the tests, I asked the technician whether the results could be faxed to the specialist in three days. She assured me that would not be a problem. Since I did not hear from the specialist in a week, I called my doctor's office. After punching through a new voice-mail system designed to improve service, I talked to a person, only to be put on hold for five minutes and then told someone would call me back that day with the results.

Gloucester County is in transition. The two longtime staples of the county's economy, oil refineries and farms, have seen their heyday. The new wave in the county, as in many other parts of the country, is high-technology industries geared to what economists call a service economy. Refineries, along the Delaware River, are experiencing some of the toughest economic slumps the industry has seen, company spokesmen say. Although extensive layoffs have not occurred, they are inevitable if the slump persists, according to the spokesmen.

AM I THE ONLY one who notices that: 1. Customer service is at an all-time low. You try to call department stores, utilities, companies, etc., and you spend lots of time on your phone and sometimes you can't even get through! You call "information," and the electronic voice can't hear what you're saying. So you repeat and eventually just hang up - but you still get billed. 2. You go to a fast-food chain, and, nine times out of 10, you have to "ask" for ketchup. 3. Your neighborhood pay phone has been ripped off the wall.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has opened more than three dozen offices and clinics in the suburbs in the last decade. Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems in King of Prussia expanded its workforce to 3,500 people, installing computers in police cruisers and developing complex federal government data networks. Lowe's has built nine stores in the Philadelphia region since 1999, part of the big-box wave of retail outlets. Together, these employers represent the direction of the Philadelphia-area economy in the last decade as it became more service-oriented, more suburban, and more reliant on health care for jobs and wages, according to sweeping new U.S. government figures.

New Jersey's continued shift from a manufacturing to service economy created a higher-than-expected number of jobs this year, but it also is helping widen the gap between the state's richest and poorest workers, economists said yesterday. Hailing continued economic growth and low inflation, Gov. Whitman released a midyear report by the state's Council of Economic Advisors showing New Jersey's job growth outstripped expectations this year and includes a large drop in the number of African Americans and Hispanics looking for work.

Whatever happened to service? Two weeks ago, I had blood work done at my doctor's office. Since adjustments in my medication depended on the tests, I asked the technician whether the results could be faxed to the specialist in three days. She assured me that would not be a problem. Since I did not hear from the specialist in a week, I called my doctor's office. After punching through a new voice-mail system designed to improve service, I talked to a person, only to be put on hold for five minutes and then told someone would call me back that day with the results.

It is 8:30 in the morning and I am standing at a gas station in a silk suit with an unusual fashion accessory dangling from my right hand. This metal and rubber accouterment looks exactly like a gasoline hose. In fact it is a gasoline hose. I am poised (for disaster) at this petroleum establishment which boasts of self-service, which is to say, no service, because there is no longer any station on my corner which has "full service," which is to say, any service. At precisely 8:33, as if on cue, the hose balks, the gas leaps from its point of destination and proceeds to decorate my skirt in a fashion familiar to Jackson Pollack fans.

In the past two decades, Pennsylvania has suffered even more than the rest of the nation as the American Dream gave way to the Workingperson's Nightmare. Only in three states was family income more equally distributed than in Pennsylvania two decades ago (based on comparing family income at the top and in the middle). But by the 1990s, Pennsylvania had slipped to 31st among the 50 states. In the 1980s, households in western Pennsylvania saw their income decline more than in all but two states, Louisiana and West Virginia.

If Wayne and Garth knew polysyllabic words and were actually employed, their workplace repartee might be a lot like the convenience-store byplay in Clerks, a lovably droll, realistic account of two thruway types stuck in dead- end jobs. Shot on a shoestring and definitely more profane than profound, this raunchy comedy suggests that the clerks giving you attitude where you buy your milk are actually closet philosophers working maximum hours for minimum wages. Some people have jobs from hell.

What Paul Tsongas says about Democrats, Republicans and the American economy has to be judged in context of the fact that he is a Democrat who wants to be president. Even so, his remarks, contained in a major new paper, "A Call to Economic Arms: The New American Mandate," strike me as eminently and unusually sensible. Democrats, he says, have focused on social and economic justice - the redistribution of wealth - to the neglect of the need to strengthen and enlarge the economy.

Prospects for luring large manufacturers to the Philadelphia area or any large metropolitan center are dim, according to a new book on the region's economy. Planners and developers in the eight-county area instead should concentrate their efforts on service industries, with an emphasis on legal firms, software and data-processing companies and insurance, the book says. "The region has evolved from an economy that specializes in the production of goods to an economy that specializes in the production of services, especially health care and those services dealing with the administration and development of firms engaged in goods production," says Post-Industrial Philadelphia: Structural Changes in the Metropolitan Economy, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.