More Signs of Economic Recovery: Workers Wanted

Three days after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that an economic recovery was underway, Eric Saca was back at work full time for the first time since October.

For the 34-year-old Bellflower resident, who started working two weeks ago as a computer network administrator for a telecommunications engineering firm, the economic recovery is as tangible as the pay in his pocket.

Although the jobless rate could worsen in the months ahead as more job hunters enter the market, the hiring picture is showing early signs of a rebound. Temporary agencies and executive headhunters report that business is picking up, particularly in services, biotechnology and technology, and even among some manufacturers.

These hopeful signs were underscored Thursday by reports that the economy grew faster than expected in the fourth quarter of 2001 and consumer confidence hit its highest level since December 2000.

“I’ll tell you what I tell Alan Greenspan: It is not yet a bounce-back, but every week since Jan. 1, we’ve put more people back to work, and the last six weeks particularly we’ve seen it get stronger each week,” said Debbie Ponds-Heide, president of the North American division of Adecco, an international staffing firm. “It’s still flat compared to the prior year, but it is rapidly picking up.”

At Team-One Employment Specialists, a Los Angeles-based staffing agency that serves the apparel and other industries, demand for permanent workers is flat. But demand for temporary administrative, clerical and light-industrial workers is up 13% this month over February and 11% over March of last year.

“The door is cracked now,” said Frank Moran, Team-One president. “The question is, how wide will it open?”

Economists and employment specialists said it is too soon to tell how strong the jobs portion of the economic recovery will be. One forecast, released this week by UCLA’s Anderson School, projects a weak recovery for both California and the national economy.

But another report, published Thursday by investment firm Salomon Smith Barney, said recent signs suggest a turnaround in the labor market may be near and payroll growth probably will have quickened in March.

“Companies are beginning to use more temporary help, which is a very good sign that the job market is beginning to improve,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Capital Management Inc. in St. Louis. “We also have seen companies start to extend the number of hours that employees who are on the job are working.”

High-volume hiring won’t begin until employers feel more confident about the economy, Reaser said. “Corporate CEOs are much more cautious about the economic outlook than economists at this point. They believe the worst is over, but they are not seeing a strong trend of orders and sales coming in the door.”

Wages and salaries, deflated when the tech bubble burst, remain fairly flat, employment specialists said. And companies that are hiring are taking their time, putting candidates through background and reference checks and even personality tests.

“This is definitely an employers’ market,” said Matt Coffin, chief executive of Los Angeles-based LowerMyBills.com Inc., which plans to add seven mid-to-high-level technology and marketing specialists to its 40-person staff. “We can be very picky about quality and make sure we’re getting the best of the best.”

That’s the job market Saca landed in when a corporate merger cost him his job Oct. 11. Saca had been laid off before, but his information technology skills had ensured he was never jobless for more than two months. This time, his job search wasn’t quick or easy.

“I knew it was bad,” Saca said. “But I had gotten several jobs in the early 1990s, during that recession, so I didn’t think it was [going to be] that bad.”

As two months stretched into five, Saca cut back his spending to essentials, dipped into savings and took a series of temporary, part-time clerical assignments for which he was overqualified. Although he took comfort in the news that the economy appeared to be turning around, Saca kept his expectations low.

“I knew that after the economy improves, it takes a while for employment to pick back up,” he said. “I was hoping it was getting better, but I didn’t know what to think.”

Saca said he was lucky to get one job-related call a week. Then, in late February, the calls picked up and he was getting five or six job interviews a week. A contract position as a network administrator sounded interesting, but the pay was less than that of his old job. Saca held out for more--and he got it.

It’s not unusual these days to see rehired workers get something close to their old salaries, said Catherine Farrell, vice president for the Western region of Drake Beam Morin Inc., an international workplace consulting firm that helped find jobs for 254,000 laid-off workers in the last year. “We’re not seeing a big decrease in salaries,” she said.

Tracy Ellis went back to work March 5, a little more than a month after she was laid off from her job as an office manager. The 31-year-old single mother said she was a bit panicked by the prospect of unemployment.

“I’m a parent--how is the rent going to get paid?” Ellis said. “Almost everyone I know was looking for a job.”

Ellis said she probably faxed out 200 resumes applying for jobs she found on the Internet and in newspapers, but she kept getting the same response: “Overqualified.”

Ellis eventually stopped looking for a permanent job and within a week found a contract assignment with a financial institution in Irvine. It pays more than her last job, and Ellis said she figured being a contractor would enable her to see whether it was a good fit. Now she hopes the job--compiling and proofreading training materials--becomes permanent.

The executive suites also are starting to turn over. At Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry International, the world’s largest corporate search firm, assignments were up 15% during the first three months of the year compared with the last quarter of 2001.

At Christian & Timbers Inc., a Cleveland-based executive recruiting firm, assignments are up 64% from the end of last year, CEO Jeffrey E. Christian said.

John Beuerle, recruitment director for Apex Direct Search Inc., a Los Angeles-based firm that specializes in technology searches, said business started to pick up about six weeks ago. “We’re filling jobs in the director and vice president level for consumer products and games,” he said. “Games has really exploded for us--PC and console games.”

Even on college campuses, where many feared that students would face D-minus prospects, employers are making offers.

“What we saw in the fall quarter was an upswing in the level of participation in recruitment activity on the part of the students,” said Kathy L. Sims, director of the UCLA career center. “The job fairs were jampacked. I think at first they were worried.”

Employers came to campus, but the mix of companies was different. The investment banking firms, management consultants and large technology corporations that have dominated college recruiting in recent years were in retreat.

Defense contractors, intelligence agencies and nonprofit organizations were quick to fill the void, and retailers made a surprisingly big showing, Sims said. “Organizations that haven’t been very competitive or glamorous to students saw an opportunity.”

Students aren’t being showered with multiple offers and enticed with signing bonuses and stock options, she said. But they are getting offers.

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