Net Increase in Employment Forecast for Early Next Year

NEW YORK —  The domestic job outlook is expected to improve in the first quarter of 1993, although growth in the West will likely lag other regions of the country, Manpower Inc. said in a survey released Sunday.

The Milwaukee-based temporary employment service said 17% of surveyed companies plan to increase their work force in the January-March period, while 13% plan staff reductions. That translates to a net gain of 4 percentage points, unadjusted for seasonal differences.

Adjusted for seasonal factors, job creation is expected to grow by 12 percentage points in the first quarter, compared with 9 percentage points in the fourth and first quarters of 1992. Seasonally adjusted figures are considered more useful for tracking overall employment trends.

“This indicates a halt to work-force attrition that has plagued the economy for the past two years,” Manpower said.

The projections were part of Manpower’s quarterly survey on employment trends. The survey, in its sixteenth year, is based on telephone interviews with more than 15,000 public and private employers in 468 U.S. cities.

The survey showed widely disparate results on a geographic basis. Recovery appears distant among businesses in the West, where companies projected a seasonally adjusted gain of 7 percentage points.

Firms in the South anticipated the best growth, with a seasonally adjusted gain of 14 percentage points.

The Northeast, although still hurting for new hiring activity, projected a seasonally adjusted gain of 9 percentage points.

The Midwest showed trends about even with the national average, at a 14-percentage-point seasonally adjusted gain.

Quarterly job growth peaked with a seasonally adjusted net gain of 20 percentage points in the first quarter of 1988 and began trending downward in the third quarter of 1989, according to Manpower surveys. Growth is expected to return in next year’s first quarter to levels not seen since the last half of the high-growth 1980s.

About 67% of companies surveyed said they did not plan any changes in their work-force size, while 3% said they did not know whether they would make changes.

Some industries, such as construction and wholesale and retail firms, normally experience a seasonal decline in new jobs in the first quarter. But the projections for the coming quarter were less negative than usual, Manpower said.

Wholesale and retail companies, which typically announce layoffs after the holidays, predicted a gain of 15 percentage points, up from 12 percentage points in the year-ago quarter. Similarly, the construction trade predicted a seasonally adjusted gain of 15 percentage points, up from 9 percentage points.

Service firms projected a seasonally adjusted gain of 14 percentage points, up from 13 percentage points in the year-ago quarter.