Most employers plan to maintain or increase staffing levels in coming months

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By James Foster
Times & Transcript Staff

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Metro Moncton employers expect an upbeat hiring climate for the first four months of the new year, the latest Manpower Outlook Survey says.

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Ron Ward

Metro Moncton employers expect an upbeat hiring climate for the first four months of the new year, the latest Manpower Outlook Survey says.

Of local employers polled for the survey, 77 per cent expect no changes to their current staff levels and another 16 per cent said they would be hiring new people in early 2009, says Mindy Stoltz of Manpower's Moncton office. Only six per cent expect to be laying off workers.

Subtracting the number that will be laying off from those remaining static or hiring more people gives Metro Moncton a Net Employment Outlook of 10, which is better than the average of all Canadian cities polled and dramatically higher than the NEO registered last year at this time.

It's also a "slight decrease from the previous quarter when the Net Employment Outlook was 13 per cent," Stoltz says, "however this quarter's outlook is an increase from the same time last year when employers reported an outlok of minus three per cent, indicating a positive first quarter to 2009.

Manpower looked at 10 sectors in compiling their statistics, which show the WHolesale and Retail Trade sector to be strongest for hiring, with an NEO of 34 per cent, followed closely by Construction at 31 per cent.

All figures are seasonally adjusted. Employers in the Services sector also anticipate a healthy first quarter of 2009 with an outlook of 20 per cent.

The figures follow on the heels of similarly strong numbers for the last quarter of 2008 despite an economic slowdown in other areas of the country and in other parts of the world, says Lori Rogers, VP of Operations for Manpower Canada.

Nationally, Rogers says, "this quarter's Net Employment Outlook indicates that the steady hiring climate experienced in the previous quarter will continue into the first quarter of 2009. Despite the global slowdown, seasonally adjusted data reveals employers in Canada will continue to expand their payrolls and at a slightly stronger pace than in the previous quarters."

For the sake of comparison, nationally the outlook number is seven per cent, about the same as at this point last year but down by six percentage points from the last quarter of 2008.

And across Atlantic Canada, the NEO equals Moncton's at 10 per cent, led by the sectors of Transportation and Public Utilities at 25 per cent, and Wholesale and Retail Trade at 21 per cent.

Across the Atlantic region, hiring propects were best in Saint John (20 per cent); Halifax (17 per cent); Fredericton (16 per cent); and St. John's (13 per cent.)

Charlottetown and Cape Breton fare poorly for job prospects early in the new year, with employers in each area reporting outlooks of minus three per cent, down considerably from the last quarter of 2008 by 13 per cent and 19 per cent,respectively.

Comparing the different regions of the nation, western Canada and Quebec registered outlooks of 12 per cent, the only two regions to surpass Atlantic Canada's 10 per cent; while Ontario expects a relatively quiet first quarter of 2009 for hiring, with an outlook of three per cent.

Manpower has 50 offices across Canada. They've been conducting their quarterly hiring surveys ffor more than 45 years, based on interviews with more than 71,000 employers worldwide.