NOW: Job outlook still muddled

Recent jobs reports show the U.S. job market continues to make a weak recovery, but Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc. says that the outlook for 2011 hiring nationally and in the Milwaukee area is improving.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the nation’s economy only gained 39,000 jobs in November, far lower than what many economists were expecting, especially after Roseland, N.J.-based Automatic Data Processing (ADP) Inc. reported that the U.S. private sector added 93,000 jobs in November.

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The nation needs to add about 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with population growth and needs to add about 300,000 jobs a month to reduce the unemployment rate, according to several economists. November job growth was so anemic that the nation’s unemployment rate increased from 9.6 percent to 9.8 percent during the month.

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“Only 39,000 jobs created in November is awful,” said Peter Morici, University of Maryland business professor, and the former director of the Office of Economics at the U.S. International Trade Commission. “After we back out health care and social services, which are largely government funded, the private sector is not creating permanent jobs – none, zero, nada. After health care, social services and temp services are backed out, the private sector lost 24,000 jobs. Ugh.”

However, the Manpower report offered a brighter picture, reporting the most optimistic hiring expectations in more than two years. U.S. employers anticipate small staffing gains in the first quarter of 2011, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. The seasonally adjusted Manpower Employment Outlook was +9 percent for the first quarter of 2011, up from +5 percent during the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2010.

That is the fifth consecutive quarter that U.S. employers are reporting a positive overall hiring outlook. However, the first quarter 2011 Manpower Employment Outlook is still almost 5 percentage points below the average Employment Outlook from 2001 to 2010.

“Across nearly all geographies of the world, the confidence to do additional hiring is improving,” said Manpower chief executive officer Jeff Joerres. “However, like the U.S., the lack of robust demand for products and services is creating a persistent level of uncertainty.”

The hiring outlook in the Milwaukee area is one of the strongest in the nation for the first quarter of 2011, according to Manpower. The Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis metro statistical area (MSA) had the third best net employment outlook in the nation at 14 percent, according to the Manpower report, up from 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 and up from 0 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

In the Milwaukee area, from January to March, 22 percent of the companies interviewed by Manpower plan to hire more employees while 8 percent plan to reduce their employment, 69 percent plan to maintain their current staff levels and 1 percent said they did not know what they planned to do with staff levels in the next quarter. That is a dramatic improvement compared to one year ago in the Milwaukee area when 11 percent of the companies surveyed said they planned to increase hiring, 11 percent said they planned to reduce staff levels, 73 percent said they planned to maintain staff levels and 5 percent said they did not know what they planned to do for hiring.

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