Manpower Employment Survey: Positive Prognosis on Jobs

Another indication of economic recovery was reported this week when the international employment agency Manpower announced that 28 percent of Costa Rican employers expect to hire more workers in the second quarter of 2010.

Meanwhile, 66 percent of the employers interviewed said they do not expect a change in employee numbers. Only 5 percent said they expect the number of their workers to decrease.

Conducting a survey of 620 national businesses, representatives of Manpower asked members of each company this question: “How do you foresee labor numbers in your organization changing over the next quarter (April-June 2010), compared with the current quarter?”

Overall, the “Net Employment Outlook” – which Manpower defines as the percentage of employers who expect to increase the number of jobs, minus the percentage who project a decrease – for the upcoming quarter was +23 percent. That represents a 20 percent increase over the +3 percent increase projected for the second quarter of 2009.

The survey was conducted in six regions of the country – Alajuela, Cartago,  Guanacaste, Heredia, Puntarenas/Limón and San José. Of the regions surveyed, employers in Cartago and Heredia expressed the most optimism, as 30 percent and 28 percent, respectively, predicted increases in jobs in the upcoming quarter. Guanacaste had the lowest regional projection of job growth, at 11 percent. Employers across all regions predicted job growth to be at least 16 percent higher in the next quarter than they had projected for the second quarter of 2009.

“Costa Rican employers are starting to recover to the level of hiring that was reported before the financial crisis, with almost three out of every 10 employers anticipating that there will be increases in their staffs,” said Alicia del Río, manager of Manpower Costa Rica. “The numbers are expected to improve over the next quarter, which indicates that people looking for jobs will have better opportunities to find positions in all the regions and in practically all of the sectors surveyed in Costa Rica.”

–Adam Williams