Overall, employers refuse to budge on their hiring plans, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. Twenty percent of firms surveyed said they will be open to hiring in the upcoming fourth quarter, about flat with the 21% who said they intended to hire in the third quarter this year.

For more than two years -- 11 quarters, to be exact -- the portion of firms who said they planned to hire has hovered around 20%. Milwaukee-based Manpower surveys about 16,000 U.S. companies on their hiring plans each quarter.

The current outlooks "tells us that this past year's pressures weren't enough to shake employer confidence and their intent to hire," said Jonas Prising, Manpower's president for the North America region.

Manpower's seasonally adjusted net-employment numbers measure the percentage of firms planning to hire minus those intending layoffs. It doesn't measure the number of jobs.

In 2000, before the economic downturn, about 30% of firms said they planned to hire, according to Manpower's seasonally-adjusted net employment figure. Meanwhile, the lowest point in recent years was about 5% in the first quarter of 2002. You have to look back to the first quarter of 1991 to find the last negative net-employment figure.

All about skills

Still, job seekers will likely experience the market very differently depending on which jobs they're looking for since employers are focusing on specific skills. "You're seeing very precise hiring," Prising said.

"Some key technical skills still are in shortage, including welders, truck drivers, health-care specialists, IT [workers], engineers. They are in high demand, whereas the lower-skilled non-specialists are in lower demand and there's ample supply," he said.

"For the right skills at the right price, employers are looking to hire, and there's nothing that they've seen that shakes that intent," he said. "Neither gas prices nor inflation fears nor other issues which are hot topics in the news right now seem to have shaken their confidence to the extent that they're scaling back on their intent to hire."

While a fair number of employers in the Manpower survey said they will hire in the upcoming quarter, the survey doesn't get at how many jobs those employers will create.

Labor-market data from other sources are mixed. Claims for state unemployment benefits rose to a six-month high in August, the Labor Department reported last week.

And long-term unemployment remains high: In August, about a third of the 7.1 million official unemployed had been out of work longer than 15 weeks, while about 18% had been out of work longer than 27 weeks.

Still, payrolls are growing, though at a moderate pace. Earlier in September, the Labor Department reported nonfarm payrolls grew 128,000 in August, the fifth straight month of moderate job growth after a surge of hiring late last year. The unemployment rate inched down to 4.7%.

By the trades

Seven of the 10 industries that Manpower tracks said their hiring plans were essentially unchanged from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. But companies in the mining industry demonstrated an increase in optimism, with 23% of firms saying they plan to hire in the fourth quarter, up from 18% in the third quarter.

Two industries pointed to a decrease: Finance, insurance and real-estate, where 18% of firms plan to hire in the fourth quarter, down from 23% in the third quarter; and education, which dipped to 13% from 17% in the third quarter.

The following are the net-employment outlooks on a seasonally adjusted basis for each of the 10 industries tracked by Manpower, in descending order, for the fourth quarter:

• Construction, 24%, flat with 24% in the third quarter;
• Mining, 23%, up from 18%;
• Durable-goods manufacturers, 23%, flat with 23%;
• Services, 23%, flat with 23%;
• Wholesale and retail trade, 21%, flat with 21%;
• Transportation and public utilities, 19%, about flat with 20%;
• Nondurables manufacturers, 19%, about flat with 18%;
• Finance, insurance and real estate, 18%, down from 23%;
• Public administration, 15%, about flat with 16%;
• Education, 13%, down from 17%.

Regional breakdown

As tracked by the Manpower survey, employers in the West and the South showed the greatest hiring optimism for the fourth quarter among four regions nationwide.

The West has a 24% net-hiring outlook on a seasonally adjusted basis, flat with 24% in the third quarter.

In the South, 23% of firms plan to hire, about flat with 24% a quarter ago.

In the Northeast, 18% of employers plan to hire, down from 20% in the third quarter, while in the Midwest 17% said they'll hire in the upcoming quarter, about flat with 18%.