Glad Tidings : New Year Will Bring More Jobs, Employer Survey Finds

IRVINE —  Orange County employers are more upbeat about economic prospects for the new year than they were at this time in 1991 and are even a tad more positive than employers in other parts of the state, a survey has found.

The survey by Manpower Inc. of 15,000 businesses nationally, including dozens in Orange County, may actually understate the optimism of local employers, said Sue Foigleman, regional manager for Manpower in Irvine. Because it was conducted in October, before the presidential election, it does not take into account any post-election feelings about the change of administration in Washington.

“When you talk to local businesses now, as I do quite frequently,” Foigleman said Monday, “you sense that employers are a lot more enthusiastic about the economic future, and that is not reflected in the survey.”

Manpower’s study shows that 13% of employers in Orange County plan to add to their payrolls in the first quarter and that 13% plan to cut their employment in the January-March period. A year ago, just 10% planned first-quarter hiring, while 15% said they expected to trim their payrolls.

Across Southern California, the survey found, 13% of employers plan to hire in the coming quarter, while 15% expect layoffs. Nationally, 12% of companies responding said they plan hiring, while 13% anticipate staffing cuts.

Changes in Orange County from a year earlier are slight, Foigleman acknowledged, but are significant because they reflect a feeling among employers “that a lot of the attrition already has been done and businesses are getting more stable. There’s not any big upswing in the economy reflected, but things aren’t getting worse, either.”

The Manpower survey’s findings for Orange County appear to bear out earlier predictions by local economists that 1993 will be a year of slowly developing job growth after two years of declining employment.

The most optimistic report yet has come from economists at Cal State Fullerton, who said in late October that they expect county employers to add 12,000 jobs to local payrolls next year--a net gain of only 1%--with most of the activity coming in the last two quarters.

Chapman University’s Center for Economic Research will unveil its predictions for 1993 in its annual Orange County Economic Outlook Conference, to be held Dec. 10 at the private school’s campus in Orange.

The Chapman forecast, based on a complicated computerized model of the Orange County economy, is expected to point to continued weakness in employment through the first half of the year, possibly with further job losses, followed by marginal improvement and, at best, a very slight net gain in jobs by the end of the year.

“The strength of the national economy just isn’t enough to help Orange County much next year,” said Esmael Adibi, director of the Chapman research center.

In the past two years, employers in Orange County have slashed nearly 77,000 full- and part-time jobs from their payrolls as they struggled to cope with the effects of a drawn-out economic slump.

Hardest hit has been manufacturing, where almost 34,000 jobs were lost between September, 1990, and September, 1992, the latest month for which employment figures are available. Most of those jobs were in computer-products and defense-related manufacturing. Economists expect the manufacturing decline to continue as Congress and the Clinton Administration continue trimming military spending in 1993.

Construction workers also have seen their jobs evaporating in record numbers--nearly 18,000 positions have been cut from local contractors’ and material suppliers’ payrolls since September, 1990. Most in the industry see little hope of much improvement in 1993.

Orange County is still heavily oversupplied with commercial office buildings, effectively killing that segment of the construction industry until sometime in 1995, experts say. By then, the economy is expected to have recovered enough to boost business expansion so that all the vacant office space in the county will be absorbed and demand for new buildings will rise.

Home builders say they don’t anticipate much new demand for housing until late next year or early in 1994, when economic recovery causes hiring to take off again and makes consumers confident enough about their job security to take on the expense of a home purchase.

In its latest survey of Orange County employers, Manpower found that job prospects appear to be best in the wholesale and retail trades, mainly because companies in those two segments have not done as much holiday-season hiring as usual and thus won’t be laying off as many people as usual in the early part of the first quarter.

Increased job losses are anticipated in finance, insurance and real estate--industries that are highly dependent on construction--and in manufacturing businesses specializing in non-durable goods such as food products, textiles and clothing, printed material, chemicals and plastics.

Manpower, based in Milwaukee, is an international employment agency specializing in temporary workers. Its quarterly employment outlook surveys include responses from 15,000 businesses across the United States.

Job Growth Mirrors O.C. Economy The rate of employment growth in Orange County typically slows as a recession approaches, hits a low point at the depth of the recession, then rebounds. This time, however, the recovery is expected to be fairly anemic. Number of jobs in millions

1979 .81 1980 .84 1981 .87 1982 .86 1983 .88 1984 .96 1985 1.01 1986 1.05 1987 1.10 1988 1.15 1989 1.19 1990 1.21 1991 1.16 1992* 1.13 1993* 1.158

* Estimate Next Quarter Hiring Plans O.C. employers are surveyed quarterly to find out if they plan to add or trim employees in the next three months:

1st Reducing Increasing qtr. payrolls payrolls 1990 5% 18% 1991 15% 15% 1992 15% 10% 1993 13% 13%

Sources: California Employment Development Department; California State University at Fullerton; Manpower Inc.