WASHINGTON — Despite a much weaker-than-expected Labor Department report on March job growth, U.S. employers have healthy hiring plans in the months ahead.
A quarterly CareerBuilder survey says 45 percent of U.S. employers plan to hire full-time, permanent employees in the second quarter. That’s up from 34 percent who said so a year ago and the highest percentage for a second quarter dating back to 2007.
Nearly half of employers (49 percent) are planning to bring on temporary or contract workers over the next three months.
“This is the best forecast we have seen for a second quarter since we started doing the survey more than 10 years ago,” said Matt Ferguson, CEO at CareerBuilder.
“Companies say they are paying close attention to policies introduced by the new administration to assess the potential impact on businesses, but the hiring outlook is optimistic,” he said.
By comparison, only 14 percent of businesses surveyed in the second quarter of 2009, in the middle of the U.S. recession, said they planned to bring on new employees.
Harris Poll conducted the survey on behalf of CareerBuilder with almost 2,400 hiring and human resource managers between Feb. 16 and March 9.
On Friday, the Labor Department said the nation’s unemployment rate fell to a near 10-year low of 4.5 percent, but companies added just 98,000 jobs in March, almost half what had been expected. The Labor Department also revised job growth in January and February lower.
