More Hired Than Fired in U.S., Survey Finds

Despite the widespread attention focused on “downsizing” at America’s leading companies, a new survey of big and medium-sized employers finds that they have been doing more hiring than firing.

But the study found that major employers in California--notwithstanding an ongoing economic recovery nurtured by gains in high technology, entertainment and foreign trade--are still adding fewer workers than their counterparts in other states.

Although government statistics find that the state’s rate of job growth has surpassed the nation’s over the last year, the new poll suggests that much of California’s employment increase is coming at small firms.

The survey, conducted by the New York-based American Management Assn., also provides further evidence of the rapid churning underneath the surface of the nation’s generally growing job market. As such, it helps explain why job insecurities persist, particularly among middle managers, even as the national economy expands.

As the AMA figures demonstrate, many of the same companies creating new jobs are simultaneously cutting other positions.

But all told, employment at the surveyed firms rose 6%, up from an increase of 4.5% the year before and the best performance since before the nation’s 1990-91 recession.

The AMA, a nonprofit research group, said 68% of the 1,441 employers surveyed created some jobs between June 1995 and June 1996, up from 58% the year before.

At the same time, 49% of the firms said they eliminated some jobs over the most recent 12-month period, down just slightly from 50% the previous 12 months.

“Nationally, the overall picture is very positive,” said Eric Greenberg, the AMA’s research director.

In California, employment growth totaled 4.4%, marking the fifth consecutive year that the AMA survey has shown the state’s big employers lagging behind U.S. companies overall.

Still, Greenberg said, the state’s belated recovery is reflected in the fact that the percentage of California firms reporting net growth, 46.2%, drew almost even with the national figure of 46.7%.

A major company highlighting the national trend of simultaneous layoffs and hiring is the telecommunications giant AT&T; Corp. The company was widely lambasted after announcing in January that it planned to eliminate 40,000 jobs over three years.

Although most of those cutbacks were earmarked for Lucent Technologies Inc., a company spun off by AT&T; earlier this year, about 17,000 of the eliminated jobs were to come at the surviving AT&T; organization.

Currently, though, AT&T; says employment at its continuing operations is 127,700, down only 500 workers since the beginning of the year.

“We are indeed cutting jobs and people from the payroll in staff jobs and in traditional long-distance work. But we are adding people to the payroll in our growth areas,” such as customer service, consulting and wireless communications, AT&T; spokesman Burke Stinson said.

Cutting nonessential positions while adding workers in expanding areas “is what any healthy company does,” Stinson added.

Still, that isn’t always comforting news to working people. “People feel themselves individually vulnerable,” Greenberg said. “Although there is more hiring than firing going on, individuals are still at risk, and individual managers and supervisors are especially at risk.”

According to the AMA figures, he said, “companies are cutting three middle-management jobs for every one they’re creating. And they’re cutting two supervisor jobs for every one they’re creating.”

But Greenberg said that when it comes to professional and technical jobs, which tend to be high-paying, the survey shows five jobs being created for every three being eliminated.

Harvard labor economist James Medoff offered a bleaker critique, saying that the flux in the job market has hit middle-aged male managers particularly hard and created profound tensions in American life. “The people going out [getting laid off] tend to be older and higher-paid, and people who are coming in tend to be younger and lower-paid,” he said.

“No one says anymore that you’ll get a lifetime job. In fact, they say that ‘we want you to be ready to leave.’ ”

In California, the sting of layoffs remains particularly sharp. The state’s unemployment rate was 7% last month, far higher than the national level of 5.2%.