Help Wanted

A shortage of secretaries

In a spoof of corporate life called Nine to Five, which 20th Century-Fox is about to begin filming, Actress Jane Fonda plays a secretary in a Los Angeles firm that is so large and anonymous that she and her water-cooler chums are not even sure what business it is in. However it does at the box office, the movie is sure to draw howls of pain from personnel officers. Reason: all over the country, companies are finding that despite today's near 6% unemployment rate, they are having to cope with a severe shortage of secretaries. That shortage is, in no small measure, caused by the lingering image of secretaries as decorative gofers.

The Department of Labor reports that more jobs are opening up in the secretarial field than in any of the other 299 work classifications on which it keeps tabs. Although there are already a record 3.6 million secretaries on public and private payrolls, new positions are being created at a rate of 440,000 a year. But while secretarial schools are filled, almost 20% of the new jobs are going begging.

Insurance firms and banks have been hit especially hard by the shortage, but the effects are also being felt in such "glamour" industries as publishing, television and advertising. Chicago's First National Bank has been giving $500 bounties to employees who recruit new secretaries, and the big CNA insurance firm offers color TVs. Sears, Roebuck and California's Crocker National Bank have held open house parties in an attempt to attract applicants.

The secretary squeeze has been developing gradually over the past five years, and corporate expansion is only one of the causes. In large part, the shortage is a side effect of the women's movement and equal opportunity programs. Now that they are encouraged to start out in management training programs or go on to study law, medicine or business management, young women graduates are less apt to want to move from campus to a secretarial pool. Says Sheila Rather, an executive with the Manhattan office of Brook Street Bureau of May fair Ltd., a personnel agency: "Business has never accepted the fact that a secretary also wants a career path." At the same time, efforts to attract men to secretarial work have fared poorly, while minorities prefer to take advantage of affirmative action programs that enable them to get jobs that promise faster advancement.

The shortage is sure to increase pressure on companies to boost secretarial wages, even though many managers argue that they are already offering ample pay for the applicants they are now getting. ASI Personnel Service, a Chicago recruiting firm, receives 30 to 40 calls a day from employers willing to pay $800 to $900 a month for experienced secretaries. However, ASI-listed candidates with the required skills are demanding $900 to $1,300 a month. In fast-growing corporate centers like Houston, top-level executive secretaries now command up to $30,000 a year.

Several firms are trying to deal with the shortage by making secretarial jobs more appealing. Crocker, Chevron and Levi Strauss have promotion-from-within programs aimed at helping talented secretaries to move up the corporate ladder. Some Chicago employers, including the Harris Trust & Savings Bank, Leo Burnett and Continental Bank, participate in a work-study program that enables secretary trainees to earn up to $300 a month while honing their skills at a secretarial school.

Many firms have found that older, more mature women who have raised their families or are weary of housekeeping can be lured back into secretarial positions. Chevron recently hired a woman of 76 out of semi-retirement to fill a job in its San Francisco office. At the Katharine Gibbs secretarial schools, many of the older women who enroll to refresh their secretarial skills are offered jobs before the course is over. Says Barbara Lyon, the Gibbs "alumnae officer" at the school's New York City branch: "Young secretaries today are restive. If you talk to any employer now, he will say, 'Give me a mature woman who has settled down and really wants this job.' "

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