Fall in manufacturing job prospects

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 23, 2003

Employer hiring intentions for the UK's manufacturing sector look set to fall in the fourth quarter.

Employer hiring intentions for the UK's manufacturing sector look set to fall in the fourth quarter.

The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey (formerly, the Quarterly Survey of Employment Prospects) provides a forecast of employer hiring intentions for the quarter ahead: October to December 2003.

The net employment outlook (the balance of employers forecasting to take on more staff) for the manufacturing sector is +7%, down on the third quarter (+14%) and on the corresponding final quarter of 2002 (+18%).

Comments Tony Howard, Managing Director at Manpower: "Employment prospects in the manufacturing sector do not look good, demonstrating the challenges the industry sees itself facing.

The year on year trend is not positive and employers in the industry are not looking forward to 2004 with any great anticipation.

This disappointing result is being driven by poor performances in the wood and paper, textiles, chemicals and food and beverages subsectors, which are all showing significant decreases on this time last year".

This result for manufacturing is also five points below the Q4 average for the last 12 years and is the third lowest Q4 result in the last 10 years.

The overall national average for employment prospects for the quarter ahead across 11 regions and eight industry sectors is +12%.

Seven of the nine sectors surveyed are planning to take on staff next quarter, with only the agriculture sector planning to reduce staff and mining and quarrying forecasting no change in staffing levels.

All eleven UK regions surveyed are planning to increase staffing levels in Q4 2003.

The East Midlands tops all regions with an outlook of +26%, significantly higher than the average for the region of +17% over the last five years.

The South West continues its strong performance from last quarter with a net outlook of +25%.

Disappointing results were reported by employers in Scotland which only predicted a job outlook of +4%.

London (+9%) continues to report poor results with the worst Q4 results for the region and significantly less than the Q4 average for London of +26% over the last five years.

While employment outlooks in Europe vary, the majority of countries reported positive net increases.

The UK showed the greatest optimism together with Sweden with a net job outlook of +12%.

By contrast, in Germany (-8%) and Ireland (-4%), a greater proportion of employers expected to decrease staffing levels than increase.

Austria's (0) employment levels are expected to remain stable.

Globally, hiring activity in the Asia Pacific region as a whole improved as employers in Hong Kong (+5%), Japan (+2%) and Singapore (+3%) reported intentions to increase staffing levels.

The Americas saw Mexico employer hiring intentions (+14%) more optimistic than the US (+11%) and Canada (+8%).

When seasonal adjustments are applied to the survey data for the USA (+4% when seasonally adjusted) and the UK (-3% when seasonally adjusted), a more meaningful view of the data is revealed, with anticipated hiring activity moving in opposite directions through to the end of the year.