After several months of discouraging news on the job front, a new survey finds many employers across Iowa plan to add to their staffs during July, August and September.
Mike Lynch, a spokesman for Manpower Incorporated, says many employers in Iowa’s biggest cities are looking to the third quarter with optimism. Lynch says Iowa’s largest city, Des Moines, had some of the state’s lowest numbers.
Of the employers surveyed, 14% plan to increase their staff while 12% plan to decrease staff in Des Moines. He says that’s an improvement from the last quarterly survey but still lags behind a year ago. Lynch says other communities in Iowa had a brighter outlook for the upcoming few months.
In Cedar Rapids, 21% of employers surveyed plan to add to their staffs while 14% plan cuts. In the Quad Cities, the numbers are still better, with 19% increasing and 10% decreasing.
The best numbers are in Omaha-Council Bluffs, with 22% of employers saying they’ll add to the staff and only seven-percent planning a staff reduction. That’s the third-best rate for the quarter for metro areas nationwide. Lynch says it’s encouraging to see things looking up in the employment picture.
"All throughout the state, it looks as though things are positive to some degree, so I think that’s a real good sign," he says. "We’re seeing greater levels of optimism throughout the state. Everybody that reported in is doing something on the positive side."
He says several industries are expecting to fare well in the upcoming quarter, including: non-durable goods manufacturers, the wholesale-retail sector and information services.
A number of other areas are not planning for such a rosy quarter, he says, with less optimism in sectors like: transportation, public utilities, education, health services and the financial industry.