Majority of employers to maintain workforce
Sixty percent of hiring managers said they planned no changes in the number of full-time, permanent employees at their companies in the first quarter, the same percentage who said their staffing levels were unchanged in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to an online survey for USA TODAY and CareerBuilder.com by Harris Interactive.
Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed expected to add workers in the first three months of the new year, down from 30 percent who beefed up their workforce in the fourth quarter. According to previous surveys, 32 percent of employers added workers in the third quarter, and 41 percent expanded their work forces in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, 7 percent said they expected to cut staff from January to March, down from 9 percent who did so in the final three months of 2007.
"The job market continues to slowly but steadily downshift," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The good news is that the weaker job market is due to less hiring and not increased layoffs."
Jack Hull, manager of Hull Precision Machining in Spencerville, Ind., expects to keep his payroll steady in the first quarter. The firm, which makes machine parts, went from four to six workers in October after the company sold a new contract to an existing customer.
While some sectors of the economy are struggling, such as the automotive area, others are doing well, Hull says.
Manufacturing "has pockets that are still good," he says. "We're trying to tip-toe through that minefield to stay with the healthy sectors."
The survey, conducted Nov. 13 to Dec. 3, involved 3,016 hiring managers and human resource professionals. CareerBuilder.com is a job-finding site jointly owned by Tribune, McClatchy, Microsoft and USA TODAY parent Gannett.
The survey follows other reports pointing to slower hiring. U.S. employers added an average 93,833 jobs in the six months through November, down from 160,500 in the prior six months, according to government data.
The unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in November, up from the recent low of 4.4 percent in March, but below the recent high of 6.3 percent in mid-2003.
A number of economists, including those at Wachovia, Lehman Bros. and Morgan Stanley, predict the unemployment rate will creep higher, but not jump, in the first half of 2008.
Craig Crispin, managing shareholder at Crispin Employment Lawyers in Portland, Ore., says an increase in applicants has led him to reduce starting salaries at his firm by 20 percent from just a few years ago.
"There are a lot of people out there looking for work, a lot of lawyers," Crispin says.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments