For the first time since the early 1990s, more companies in Santa Clara County plan to cut staff than add positions in the next quarter, according to a new survey by Manpower. Local employers are more pessimistic than employers nationally, the survey found. Overall, Manpower found that 27 percent of employers planned to add staff, triple the number of those that planned to cut. One-quarter of the companies plan to cut jobs in the third quarter, compared with 13 percent in the second quarter. The rest planned no changes or were undecided.
Unemployment is lower, for example, and the local economy is more diverse.
But the declining local hiring projections are more dramatic because of the feverish pace of hiring in the recent past. A year ago, half the employers planned to add staff. The results are less optimistic than those from the same period last year, when 35 percent said they would recruit additional people and only 5 percent expected employment declines, according to the survey. However, national economic data reported last week showed some positive signs, including a decline in weekly jobless claims and growing optimism among U.S. manufacturers that raised hopes that interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve may soon turn the economy around. Manpower's survey has been measuring employers' hiring intentions for 25 years and has been an indicator of employment trends.