Roughly 17% of Baton Rouge area employers plan to add to their payrolls in the second quarter, while 72% say they expect to maintain current employment from April through June.
That’s according to a new quarterly survey of area employers by the ManpowerGroup, a Milwaukee-based multinational human resource consulting firm. The firm—whose quarterly reports include outlooks for 42 nations worldwide, the United States and it’s 100 largest metropolitan areas—reports just 7% of Capital Region employers say they plan to reduce their workforce in the coming quarter. Another 4% are unsure of their plans.
The survey results leave the Capital Region with a Net Employment Outlook of 10%, according to the ManpowerGroup’s methodology, which takes the percentage of employers anticipating increases and subtracts the percentage anticipating a decline in employment. Though reflecting positive growth, the outlook number is down from a net outlook of 14% in the first quarter of this year and 11% during the second quarter of 2014, the firm says.
It also places Baton Rouge among metro areas with the weakest outlooks for the coming quarter. It should be noted, however, that all 100 U.S. metro areas in the survey have a positive net outlook for the second quarter, with Boise, Idaho leading the country, at 32%. Birmingham, Alabama, and Wichita, Kansas, also have a 10% outlook. El Paso, Texas (9%); Youngstown, Ohio (8%); and Oklahoma City (6%) are the only metros with lower outlook index scores than Baton Rouge.
As for Louisiana’s second-quarter outlook, the survey shows 18% of employers plan on making additional hires, while 71% say they’ll maintain current employment levels, 6% say they’ll decrease employees and 5% are unsure. That leaves the state with a Net Employment Outlook of 12%, down from 19% in the first quarter and on par with the 12% outlook from the second quarter of 2014.
The U.S. outlook score is 16% for the second quarter, unchanged from the previous quarter and up from a 13% outlook in the second quarter of last year.
See the complete survey results, or check out information specific to the Capital Region and Louisiana.
—Steve Sanoski
