STEEL INDUSTRY WOES WEIGH HEAVILY ON JOHNSTOWN

Tony Oravec, a welder, stood in the sun-splashed parking lot cut into a mountain above the Bethlehem Steel Corporation plant.

''Normally, this place is so noisy you can't hear yourself think,'' he said. But today the plant, in the valley below, was quiet as the grave. There were only about a hundred cars in the lot. A visitor could hear the wind against the trees and shrubs on the mountainsides that are turning brilliant red and yellow in the early autumn in western Pennsylvania and hear the insects jumping through the grass as they touched on the brown, dried leaves from the cottonwood trees.

Mr. Oravec and this rather bleak blacktop parking lot and the quiet black plant sprawling below are all symbols of the recession and the profound industrial change occurring in the United States.

The American Iron and Steel Institute says the steel industry is operating at its lowest level since 1938. Steel plant after steel plant has closed or substantially reduced production. Tens of thousands of steelworkers have lost their jobs; many will never get them back, steel industry experts concede. Community after community in the vast manufacturing center of the Middle West is in disarray.

In Johnstown, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the town's major employer for decades, has reduced its work force to about 2,800 today from 12,000 or 13,000 in the late 1970's, said the plant's general manager, H. Jack Kinback. Two weeks ago the company even closed its new electric furnace, which was just opened last October at a cost of more than $100 million.

''The economy is knocking the socks off us,'' Mr. Kinback said. Unemployment at 17.3%

Sixty-five percent of the Johnstown area's steelworkers are unemployed, said John M. Rubal, executive director of the Johnstown Chamber of Commerce. Over all, unemployment in Johnstown stood at 17.3 percent, eighth highest in the nation, in July, the most recent figures available. It has led Pennsylvania in unemployment for a year and a half, Mr. Rubal said.

Reduction of steel production has meant reduction in coal mining, also important to the Johnstown economy. Mayor Herbert Pfuhl Jr. said that as a result of the steel and coal decline, city revenues had fallen about 35 percent.

''The capital is not there,'' he said. At the parking lot, steelworkers hurrying from their jobs at 3 P.M. joked about themselves as endangered species, even as extinct. A worker will soon have to have 30 years' seniority to stay on the job, said one, Lamot Weyht. Alex Zienko, another worker, said: ''It's a lot different than what it used to be. This plant used to boom.''

Life, it seems, has always been kicking Johnstown in the shins, sticking a sharp stick in its eye. From 1808 to 1936, Johnstown, which was founded in 1800 and is squeezed along the Conemaugh River Valley, was flooded 17 times. The Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 killed 2,300 people; bodies washed downriver as far as Pittsburgh. The 1936 flood took 30 lives, the 1977 flood 73. Signs on buildings in this city of 35,500 people point out the high water marks of the floods. School and Football Problems

Today, besides the troubles in the steel industry, Johnstown's schoolteachers are on strike, shutting the public schools. Moreover, the dispute between the National Football League players and owners has meant that the Pittsburgh Steelers, beloved in western Pennsylvania, are not playing.

All this is dispiriting, even in a town accustomed to adversity. ''Johnstown people are noncomplex people,'' Mr. Rubal said, meaning this as high praise. ''These people work hard, they stop and have a beer. They watch football games.''

But he said Johnstown people were angry at what they viewed as the dumping of foreign steel in the United States, at prices subsidized by foreign governments, and at what they regarded as the tardiness of the Federal Government in combating the problem.

Mr. Rubal is directing a petition drive aimed at gathering 50,000 signatures to protest the problem. Far more than 50,000 signatures will be gathered, he said today, thumbing through the petitions already received.

A rally in Central Park downtown is also planned next Friday to protest high unemployment and what the town regards as steel dumping. Then the petitions will be presented to the White House.

''We don't need these foreign products in the United States,'' said Mary O'Donnell, who gathered 22 signatures just this morning. Tavern Losing Business

At Michael's Tavern, near Bethlehem's Franklin Division plant, the bartender, asked what the recession has done to his business, said, ''It's terrible.'' Normally, he said, the tavern would be packed with steelworkers, perhaps drinking Iron City or Miller Lite draught.

Today, one steelworker from the 3 P.M. shift was in the tavern. He left quickly and caught his bus. At the parking lot, a worker, moving too fast for his name to be taken, said: ''This plant is like a sinking ship. Even the rats have left.''

Another worker, Matthew Petrunak, said it saddened him to see weeds growing along the unused rail tracks at the mill. He said he had been a steelworker 33 years and expected to lose his job in three weeks.

Yet none of the difficulties confronting Johnstown, city leaders say, should suggest that the town has given up. Johnstown is fortunate in a couple of ways. With three hospitals, it is a regional medical center, which brings in money and jobs. Hospitals are perhaps the city's major employer today, Mr. Rubal said.

Also, he said, the 1977 flood led to a $50 million bond issue and $90 million in low-interest loans to small businesses in the community, perhaps postponing the effects of the recession. Citizens Who Save Their Money

Moreover, the citizens of Johnstown, used to adversity, have always put money away in savings accounts, Mr. Rubal said. And if an appliance or an automobile breaks down, self-reliant Johnstown people go buy a part and fix it rather than paying someone else to do it, he said.

All in all, he says, there is money in Johnstown and people are coping, as they have with floods and the economic vagaries of the steel and coal industries for decades.

Despite the problems, workers and city leaders say Johnstown is a nice place to live. ''It has a nice even pace to it,'' Mr. Oravec said. He recalled that when he was 17 years old, too young to work at Bethlehem, he went to Detroit and got a job on a Ford Motor Company assembly line. He lasted six months, he said.

''In Detroit, you could fall dead in the street and people would walk over you,'' he said. Yet it cannot be denied that Johnstown's problems are substantial. Workers, union leaders, Mr. Rubal and Mr. Kinback all say the Bethlehem plant, whose buildings sprawl for several miles through Johnstown, will probably never again employ the high numbers of workers it once did. High-technology steel processes will dramatically reduce employment levels, the general manager said. At full capacity of 1.2 million tons of steel a year, the plant will employ no more than 7,000 workers, Mr. Kinback said.

''I think that the steel industry is going to come back,'' Mayor Pfuhl said. ''But I look for it to be a more technological industry than in the past.'' Depressing Work for Manager

Normally, Mr. Kinback said, running an important plant in a rather small community like Johnstown would be a wonderful job. But under the current conditions, he said, he finds his work extremely depressing.

The Johnstown plant, which produced railroad cars, has always had a high reputation for a diligent work force and good productivity. When people ask Mr. Kinback when the good times will return, he said, ''I'd like to be able to say next week or the first or the year,'' but he cannot.

Despite efforts to make progress in Johnstown, the recession and change in the steel industry weigh heavy on many workers. Mr. Oravec is only 48, but he is talking of retiring soon if the industry does not revive. With 30 years' service, he would be able to draw about $950 a month in benefits until the age of 62, when Social Security would begin.

''I'm a pretty young guy to talk about retirement,'' he said. ''But if there's nothing around, what will I do?''