Jones Lang LaSalle

Hiring outlook: Steady as she goes
Employers' hiring plans hold firm for 9 straight quarters
By Andrea Coombes, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Mar 14, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Will the go-go hiring days of the Internet boom ever return?

It appears not, as employers seem intent on keeping their hiring plans firmly in check, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.

Twenty-one percent of the firms surveyed plan to hire in the second quarter of 2006, about flat from the 20% who intended to hire in the first quarter this year -- and the percentage of firms planning to hire has remained about the same every quarter for more than two years now.

Manpower's seasonally adjusted net-employment numbers measure the percentage of firms planning to hire minus those intending layoffs. It does not measure the number of jobs.

Manpower surveys about 16,000 U.S. companies on their hiring plans each quarter.

"U.S. employers are continuing their healthy hiring pace," said Jonas Prising, Manpower's president for the North America region.

"This is the ninth quarter in the row where they've expressed this level of hiring activity: 30% foresee an increase, and 6% foresee a decrease" in hiring, Prising said.

But as job-seekers know only too well, the job market these days doesn't resemble a boom time.
"We may have moved away from the boom-and-bust tendencies of the past where either it's all gloom and things go down very rapidly or it's all we're booming and things are moving up very fast," Prising said.

"There are good opportunities out there," Prising said. "But employers are looking to become a bit more consistent in the way they go about looking for talent.

"People still have to work hard to find the right job. Employers are discerning and they know what they're looking for and they'll wait to get exactly what they're looking for," he said.
Recent job market data

Manpower's ongoing outlook appears to jibe with the U.S. Labor Department's data for previous months. Non-farm payrolls increased by 243,000 in February, the Labor Department reported this month.

Payrolls have increased by 2.05 million in the past year, an average monthly growth of 171,000. The economy requires about 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs a month to stay even with population growth. See full story.

The current unemployment rate is 4.8% and 7.2 million people are unemployed, according to the Labor Department. A year ago, there were 8 million unemployed, and the jobless rate was 5.4%.
Mining boom?

Mining and construction firms were the most optimistic among the 10 industries studied.
Thirty-three percent of mining employers intend to hire in the upcoming quarter, on a seasonally-adjusted basis, as do 28% of construction firms.

The following are the net-employment outlooks for the upcoming quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis for each of the 10 industries Manpower tracks, in order of most optimistic:

Mining, 33%
Construction, 28%
Durable-goods manufacturers, 22%
Wholesale and retail trade, 22%
Finance, insurance and real estate, 21%
Services, 21%
Non-durables manufacturers, 19%
Transportation and public utilities, 17%
Education, 16%
Public administration, 12%

The least optimistic employers were in the public administration category -- that is, government agencies.

"That is really the only sector in this employment outlook where you can see a softening that is carried through a quarter as well as on a year-over-year basis," Prising said.

West shows strength

Employers in the West showed the greatest hiring optimism among four regions nationwide, with a 26% net-hiring outlook, according to Manpower.

In the South, 23% of employers plan to hire, while in the Midwest and the Northeast, 17% of firms do.

"The West has been coming through with a strong and healthy hiring outlook now for the past 9 quarters, especially in these past two quarters. They've done very well," Prising said. "The Northeast and Midwest have lagged the level of optimism, but we're still talking about positive territory."