Gradually, maybe even agonizingly, job prospects are brightening in the New York metro area, according to a survey conducted by employment-services company Manpower.
The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey found that 13 percent of area respondents plan to hire more workers in the second quarter of 2013, 7 percent expect to reduce their payrolls, and 76 percent will be standing pat. Four percent weren’t sure what they were going to do in the coming three months.
But the numbers seem to diagnose a case more of stopping the bleeding than of actual healing setting in.
The 13 percent who expected to add staff was actually down from the 17 percent who gave the same answer in the first quarter, hardly reason to start tossing that confetti.
No, the big change from quarter to quarter was a plunge in the percentage of employers who reported they planned to reduce staff levels: all the way down to 7 percent, from 16 percent.
Nationwide, Manpower found that 18 percent of employers planned to add staff and 5 percent expected a payroll decline.