Hiring Prospects Still Fairly Dim, But Workers' Job Security May Have Improved, BNA Survey Finds

3/14/2002

From: Karen James Cody of BNA, 202-452-1469; e-mail: kcody@bna.com; Web site: http://www.bna.com/

WASHINGTON, March 14 -- Employment prospects will remain weak through the spring, but employees appear to face less risk of job loss than they did three months ago, according to projections from 228 respondents to BNA's latest quarterly employment survey. Production/service hiring opportunities may improve slightly in the second quarter, but white-collar workers' prospects likely will decline even further. Moreover, job opportunities for all three employee groups covered by the survey are much dimmer than they were just a few quarters ago. Still, the survey does indicate modest improvement in job security, as plans to cut back employment levels appear to have fallen off over the past three months.

The BNA survey finds that:

-- Hiring opportunities for technical/professional and office/clerical job candidates continue to erode. Just 14 percent of responding establishments plan to bolster their technical/professional staffs during the second quarter, down two percentage points from the previous quarter and 10 points below the level recorded a year ago. Likewise, plans to expand office/clerical employment (7 percent of companies) have fallen off from last quarter (10 percent) and projections for the spring of 2001 (14 percent). White-collar job prospects have plummeted to their lowest levels in almost seven years.

-- Production/service employment opportunities may improve a bit in the second quarter, but that uptick likely will offer little solace to those who enjoyed a booming job market from 1998 through mid-2000. Thirteen percent of surveyed organizations expect to hire new production/service workers in April, May, and June, up slightly from projections for the first quarter (11 percent), but still well below the level recorded one year ago (19 percent). Moreover, nearly three out of 10 surveyed employers (29 percent) projected imminent expansion in their production/service staffs just two years ago.

-- Although projections for the second quarter suggest weak hiring prospects, workers' jobs may be a bit safer than they were three months ago. For all three nonmanagement employee groups covered by the survey, reports of planned workforce reductions declined from projections last quarter. Nine percent of firms plan to reduce their production/service ranks this spring, down from 12 percent in the previous quarter but still up from a year ago (8 percent). Planned cuts in technical/professional staff fell off substantially from first-quarter projections (12 percent to 7 percent), but still outpaced levels recorded for the second quarter of 2001 (4 percent). Seven percent of employers expect to trim their office/clerical workforces in the spring, compared with 11 percent during the first quarter and 5 percent of companies surveyed one year ago.

-- Reports of production/service workers on layoff have risen substantially over the past year, while layoff incidence among office/clerical staff and technical/professional employees has edged up modestly since early 2001. Sixteen percent of responding firms had production/service workers on inactive status at the time of the survey (January and February), up from 14 percent in the previous quarter and 8 percent one year ago, and the highest proportion of employers reporting laid-off production/service staff since the fourth quarter of 1993. Six percent of the surveyed establishments had office/clerical staff on layoff at the beginning of the year, compared with 8 percent in the previous quarter and 5 percent in January and February of 2001. While unchanged from three months ago, reports of technical/professional employees on inactive status (9 percent) outpaced levels recorded a year ago (5 percent).

-- Recruiting has become far less burdensome in recent months. One-quarter of the responding organizations had trouble finding qualified candidates for technical/professional vacancies in early 2002, compared with nearly half of firms surveyed a year ago (45 percent) and the lowest percentage of employers reporting hard-to-fill technical/professional jobs in more than five years. Moreover, problems filling vacant production/service jobs (14 percent reported difficulty) and office/clerical positions (7 percent) are at their lowest points since 1996.

(Further details and breakdowns by industry, size, and region are contained in the full report.)

BNA's survey of the employment outlook has been conducted quarterly since 1974. This quarter's report is based on responses from 228 human resource and employee relations executives representing a cross section of U.S. employers, both public and private.

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For more information on the survey results, contact the BNA Survey Research Unit at 202-452-4389. For press copies of the report, contact Karen James-Cody, Media Relations, at 202-452-4169.