Bleak Hiring Outlook Confirmed : Employment: Survey of employers reinforces economists’ predictions that the county’s job picture won’t brighten in early 1992.
Economists have been predicting it, and now a survey of local employers adds credence to their statements: Orange County’s bleak hiring outlook shows no signs of recovery in the first quarter of 1992.
Orange County businesses--typically more upbeat than other parts of the country about the future--now are less sanguine about immediate prospects than employers nationally, according to a hiring forecast released this week by Manpower Inc.
That finding is substantiated by local employment specialists, who say they see no signs of improvement until late 1992.
The local survey by the Irvine area headquarters office of Manpower Inc. found that only 10% of Orange County employers plan to hire hourly employees during the first three months of 1992, compared to 15% of companies nationwide who plan to hire.
But 15% of employers in Orange County and nationally said they expect hourly payrolls to shrink from January to March. That erases the benefit to the economy of the 10% of local employers who do plan to hire, said Sue Foigleman, area manager for Manpower.
Most local firms surveyed--68%--said they plan neither to hire nor cut staff in early 1992, while 7% said they still were unsure of their first-quarter hiring plans.
Just three months ago, local employers--perhaps buoyed by weak signs of a recovery that have since evaporated--reported much more confidence in the economy than they now show.
In Manpower’s survey for the last three months of 1991, conducted in August, 18% of Orange County employers said they planned to expand their hourly payrolls during the September-December period. Only 5% said they expected to shrink their work forces.
The shift in local employers’ hiring plans suggests that they lack confidence that the national and Southern California economies will stage much of a recovery early next year.
Eleanor Jordan, the Orange County labor market analyst for the state Employment Development Department, sees most of 1992 as a bad year for local hiring.
“Typically, the worst unemployment comes at the end of a recession and the beginning of a recovery” she said. Employers typically postpone layoffs as long as they can. But they also tend to delay hiring at the start of an economic recovery, fearing that the good times won’t last.
Forecasters at Chapman University’s Center for Economic Research in Orange have said that they do not expect the local economy to rebound until the third quarter of 1992.
Chapman will unveil its annual economic forecast for Orange County on Dec. 12. The forecast is expected to predict a continued loss of local jobs through at least the first half of 1992.
Manpower’s findings “seem to be consistent with where we see the economy going,” said James Doti, Chapman’s president and chief economic forecaster.
Jordan concurs: “In January, the first month of the new year, we have the biggest layoffs of the year because of all the stores letting their Christmas help go. And I don’t see much hiring in February or March.”
In fact, Jordan doesn’t expect any net employment gains in Orange County next year and says she wouldn’t be surprised if there was a slight decline, as there has been this year.
Manpower, which is based in Milwaukee, specializes in placing temporary hourly workers. The company’s field offices survey 1,500 employers nationally each quarter to gauge national and regional hiring outlooks for clerical, office and manufacturing employees.
Foigleman said the survey of Orange County businesses shows that the first-quarter employment scene will be most volatile in service industries such as health, recreation, tourism, and business and personal services.
The services have been Orange County’s largest and fastest-growing employment category for several years--now accounting for 27% of all employment in the county, or 335,100 jobs, according to Jordan.
Jordan said she expects the services to account for most of the job creation in the county in 1992.
The prolonged recession, particularly in the development industry, already has resulted in job losses in engineering, architecture, accounting, business management and consulting--all components of the service segment--she said, and more layoffs in those areas are expected in the early part of the year.
She said she also expects more layoffs in the already hard-hit building industry, where payrolls have been pared by nearly 13,000 jobs since the height of the building boom in late 1989.
Job Growth Tracks O. C.’s Economy
As the economy enters a recession, the rate of annual job creation in Orange County traditionally has slowed, hitting a low point just as the recession ends and remaining in the doldrums after other signs of recovery appear.
Annual job growth rate, in thousands of jobs and percentage change from previous year, with recession years in ** :
1979 811.3 7.3 1980 843.8 4.0 1981** 871.8 3.3 1982** 856.2 -1.8 1983 882.9 3.1 1984 959.5 8.7 1985 1008.1 5.1 1986 1048.8 4.0 1987 1100.5 4.9 1988 1157.6 5.2 1989 1198.2 3.5 1990** 1225.6 2.3 1991* 1213.3 -1.0**
* Estimate
Source: California Employment Development Department
O.C. Employers Remain Cautious
The first-quarter job outlook in Orange County is the weakest in years, according to an annual survey that asked employers whether they plan to increase or decrease their hourly payrolls in the coming quarter.
Percentage of O.C. companies planning to change their payroll in the first quarter of 1992 compared to the previous two years: Year: Reducing Payrolls 1990: 5% 1991: 15% 1992: 15% Year: Increasing Payrolls 1990: 18% 1991: 15% 1992: 10% Source: Manpower Inc.
