Hiring will be slow in Orange County this summer but could end up being better than expected based on an uptick in recent weeks in requests for temporary workers, says Karen Tarca, a spokeswoman for Manpower Inc., the temporary staffing agency.
About 13% of employers in the Santa Ana-Los Angeles-Long Beach area 
plan to add staff from July to September, according to the latest quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. That's up from 12% in the second quarter.
Layoffs, however, are easing with 17% of those surveyed planning to cut staff this quarter, down from 23% during the last three months.
Temp hiring is an important economic indicator because many employers will turn to temps when business first begins to pick up but before they are confident enough the turnaround is for real.
Any increase would be good news for Orange County, where unemployment hit 8.6% May, tied with April for the highest rate on records dating back to 1990. A year ago, the local jobless rate was 4.7%.
Tarca says the overall job market appears to have stabilized and is much improved over the fourth quarter of 2008, when temp hiring virtually came to a halt.
"In terms of the U.S., we've had 10 weeks of stability in our organization which is a very positive trend that we haven't seen in more than a year," Tarca says.
In Orange County, where Manpower has four offices, she says hiring stabilized over the last two months, but in the last couple of weeks there's been a slight increase.
"It's definitely not where it was last year but we are seeing signs of a pickup," she says.
Among those who are adding temps are banks, which are beefing up their mortgage refinance staff, and the hospitality industry, which usually brings on more people during the summer tourist season, says Tarca. Business also is good in the medical device industry and at pharmaceutical companies.
Who's not hiring? "Anything related to construction," she says.
See the third quarter Manpower Employment Outlook Survey for Orange County-Los Angeles-Long Beach HERE.
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This is completely false. I run a business and regularly meet with other owners and the consensus is very bad. Even the happy talkers are stunned at how quickly thing are falling now. Companies are closing all the time across most industries.
Get ready America because temporary jobs will be the norm in 2010. Their will still be full time jobs but a vast majority of of them will be higher pay temp jobs with no benefits.
Yep I agree who are they trying to kid I know people who have been out of work for a year and its especial hard for the people over 50 and women over 50 its next to impossible to get anything that pays half way decent its just very sad and it wont turn around for a very long time i dont think. So I dont think most of us are letting the wool be pulled over our eyes we can see for ourselves if anything it will get a whole lot worse. Definetly its not turning around.
A McJob won't keep us in our McMansions ......
While the private sector may be stabilizing, the public sector will be going through round after round of layoffs as the budget situation continues to deteriorate and both parties in the dysfunctional state legislature refuse to deal with the problem. The County is still the largest employer in OC. These layoffs will probably result in additional layoffs in the private sector later in the year as retail will be further impacted. So things are looking up Register readers, your glee at the misfortune of government worker will help keep your spirits up. I hope you all enjoy living next door to an unsupervised state prison inmate who just got an early release from San Quentin.
The job market will be depressed until 2011 or longer in the OC. Many businesses in California will be moving to other states and so will many people. It's not looking good for California or anyone looking for work. that's a fact. Retail stores in the malls are hurting big time. I think some malls will close down completely here.
I think the good news (and the point of this article) is that we have defintely hit bottom. When you began to see good indicators (no matter how slight) emerging (intstead of all bad), thing have begun to turn (the key word there being "begun"). The stock market recovery (albeit slow) and the temp hiring "upticks" to which this article refers are examples of this.
The question remains (and no one knows for sure). is how long COMPLETE recovery will take.
I doubt it. Specially since the data is from a Temp Agency. Summer jobs. These people who added to the increase, will be added back to the unemployment lines when the season ends.