Highway maintenance workers
Maintain highways, municipal and rural roads, airport runways, and rights-of-way in safe condition. Duties include patching broken or eroded pavement, and erecting and repairing guard rails, highway markers, and snow fences using a posthole digger, shovel, axe, saw, hammer and nails, or power tools. May also clear brush or plant trees along rights-of-way.

• 1998 employment: 155,000
• Projected 1998-2008 employment change: About as fast as average
• Most significant source of training: Short-term on-the-job training

Mining, quarrying, and tunneling occupations
Rock splitters, quarry: Separate blocks of rough dimension stone from quarry mass using jackhammer, wedges, and feathers. Roof bolters: Operate self-propelled machine to install roof support bolts in underground mine. Mining machine operators: Operate mining machines, such as self-propelled or truck-mounted drilling machines, continuous mining machines, channeling machines, and cutting machines to extract coal, metal and nonmetal ores, rock, stone, or sand from underground or surface excavation. Exclude truck, shovel, and conveyor operators. Continuous mining machine operators: Operate self-propelled mining machines that rip coal, metal and nonmetal ores, rock, stone, or sand from the face and load it onto conveyors or into shuttle cars in a continuous operation. Mine cutting and channeling machine operators: Operate machines that cut or channel along the face or seams of coal mines, stone quarries, or other mining surfaces to facilitate blasting, separating, or removing minerals or materials from mines or from the earth’s surface. Include shale planers.

• 1998 employment: 23,000
• Projected 1998-2008 employment change: A decline
• Most significant source of training: Long-term on-the-job training

Pipelayers and pipelaying fitters
Pipelayers: Lay glazed or unglazed clay, concrete, plastic, or cast-iron pipe for storm or sanitation sewers, drains, water mains, and oil or gas lines. Perform any combination of the following tasks: Grade trenches or culverts, position pipe, or seal joints. Pipelaying fitters: Align pipeline section in preparation of welding. Signal tractor driver for placement of pipeline sections in proper alignment. Insert steel spacer.

• 1998 employment: 57,000
• Projected 1998-2008 employment change: Slower than average
• Most significant source of training: Moderate-term on-the-job training

Roustabouts, oil and gas
Perform a variety of assigned tasks in or around an oil field such as assembling or repairing equipment, digging drainage trenches, and loading or unloading trucks.

• 1998 employment: 30,000
• Projected 1998-2008 employment change: A decline
• Most significant source of training: Short-term on-the-job training