‘Help Wanted’ Signs Brighten Mexico Outlook : Economy: While the financial crisis still continues, there are positive signs the government is starting to get control of the situation.

“Help Wanted.”

For the first time since Mexico plunged into an economic crisis in 1982 and a little more than nine months into President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s term, the signs are going up outside plants and factories scrambling for workers.

“Two years ago it was hard for someone over 35 to find a job. Now we’re placing people as old as 50,” said Tomas Acosta, head of the placement service for Monterrey’s National Federation of Independent Unions.

Bacilio Ortiz, personnel manager for a contractor building Monterrey’s first subway, said he had to go into the countryside to find workers.

“We’re looking for people that will do hard work,” he said. “There are people here but they prefer to work inside where it’s air-conditioned.”

“Oh, there’s work,” said Rosa Maria Garcia, who runs a small meat market in a working class neighborhood. “But many people still can’t make it.”

She said the average consumer is still living with the economic crisis, still buying less meat, cheaper cuts or stretching it in stews.

The average worker’s buying power is still 50% below what it was in 1981, the year before the collapse, and prices are going up despite a wage and price freeze.

Nevertheless, positive signs have come with figures that indicated Mexico’s gross domestic product, the value of its goods and services, was up 2.4% in the first part of 1989 over the same period last year and that industrial production grew 4.7% through May.

Salinas’ Administration had cautiously predicted annual growth would reach about 1.5% while some independent analysts predicted 1% growth at best. But now analysts are projecting 1989 annual growth in the same range--2.2% to 2.4%.

“It’s begun to neutralize the crisis,” said Jorge Mancilla, director of economic studies for the Nuevo Leon state Chamber of Industries in Monterrey, which is 100 miles south of the Texas border.

What some analysts are calling the “mini-boom of 1989” would have been viewed as sluggish by the standards of 1981, the last year of a boom that saw 8% annual growth rates fed by skyrocketing oil revenues.

“The principal motor back then was the excess demand of the public sector. There isn’t that right now,” said Everardo Elizondo, general director of the economic forecasting firm Index.

But in a country that has lived through eight years of hardship--a foreign debt that topped $107 billion, triple-digit inflation, shrinking economic output, plummeting oil prices, plummeting salaries, plummeting consumer buying power--even minimal growth is raising eyebrows.

“Nobody knows for certain why the economy grew so fast at the beginning of 1989. It wasn’t forecast,” Elizondo said.

Acosta said he has the answer. “There’s a feeling of confidence again,” he said. “It has to do with the attitude of the government.”

Salinas has stepped up economic measures initiated by his predecessor, Miguel de la Madrid, most notably the opening of the economy to imports. Salinas has said his greatest achievement so far is a renewed spirit of confidence.

Driving to reach a 6% annual growth rate by the end of his term and create an economy that can provide jobs for 1 million new workers a year, Salinas has sold off inefficient state-owned companies, taken decisive action to fight corruption and union featherbedding and pushed to encourage new investment by both Mexicans and foreigners.

“In nine months we have a new foreign investment law, transportation has been deregulated, the financial system has been deregulated, the economy is being reprivatized,” Mancilla said. “These are giant steps toward modernization.”

Economic indicators from the first half of 1989 “demonstrate a tendency for sustained moderate growth,” he said.

Exports of manufactured goods hit a record $5 billion through May--4 1/2 times higher than in 1981.

The private sector has responded by increasing investments, especially in machinery, in order to compete with foreign imports and, for many, to enter the lucrative export market.

Private investment was up 3.6% through May compared with the same period last year.