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Posted on Fri, Oct. 23, 2009 10:58 PM
Staffing will be flat in fourth quarter, survey says
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Most employers will keep their staffing levels flat in the fourth quarter, according to a survey of hiring officials released by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Fifty-nine percent of companies will maintain existing payrolls through the end of this year, while 14 percent expect to cut jobs.
Layoffs will be slightly more likely in companies with 500 or more employees. The survey indicated that 19 percent of large employers plan fourth-quarter staff cuts.
Overall, hiring officials are slightly more confident about an improving job market than they were earlier in the year, but only 20 percent of companies are likely to do any hiring by year’s end.
The organization’s fairly downbeat survey results were mirrored in other job market data.
U.S. employers initiated 2,562 mass layoff actions in September, separating 248,006 workers from their jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Mass layoffs are those that affect at least 50 employees of a single employer.
The Labor Department also said that new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week. That’s after sinking the week before to the smallest number of new claims for unemployment benefits since the beginning of the year.
The human resource group’s fourth-quarter survey also noted that what employers actually did in the third quarter caused more job loss than what the hiring officials had expected for that quarter.
Looking forward to the third quarter, only 13 percent of the survey respondents had expected to conduct layoffs. But the current survey found that 30 percent ended up cutting jobs between July and September.
The most prolific job cutters in the third quarter were government (41 percent in the government sector had layoffs). .
Looking at fourth-quarter expectations, publicly owned for-profit companies plan to hire staff at the highest rate (28 percent).
Twenty-five percent of privately owned for-profit companies plan to add staff, as do 12 percent of nonprofits and 11 percent of government offices.
To reach Diane Stafford, call 816-234-4359 or send e-mail to stafford@kcstar.com.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 23, 2009 10:58 PM
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