Optimism on jobs

TRENDS: East is the most bullish.

India's eastern region has emerged as the region of the country with the most stable employment outlook, according to Manpower Inc's Employment Outlook Survey for the first quarter of 2006.

Optimistic first quarter hiring intentions were anticipated by employers in all four regions.

However, while quarter-on-quarter decreases were forecast across all four regions for January-March 2006, as compared to the last quarter of 2005, the decline was the smallest for the East- a Net Employment Outlook (NEO) of +31 per cent, a decrease of just one percentage point. Employers in the North region reported the most optimistic hiring expectations (+32 per cent), followed by East (+31 per cent) and South (+28 per cent), while West was the least optimistic region (+18 per cent).

(The figure for 'Net Employment Outlook'is derived by taking the percentage of employers expecting a total increase, and subtracting from this, the percentage expecting to see a decrease in employment at their location in the next quarter.)

The North's NEO of +32 per cent represented a decrease of 8 percentage points over the outlook for the last quarter of 2005. The South's NEO of +28 per cent represented the greatest quarter-on-quarter decrease (18 percentage points) of any region during the quarter.

The NEO for the West, although positive (+8 per cent), saw a decrease of 7 percentage points quarter-on-quarter.

The survey was conducted through interviews of a representative sample of 4,288 employers in India.