Job Prospects Looking Up, Says Business Economists

A quarterly measure of sales at U.S. companies rose to its highest level in almost four years as profits also improved, increasing job prospects, the National Association for Business Economics said earlier this week.

Fifty-three percent of the economists in a third-quarter survey responded that demand increased, compared with 11 percent saying it fell. The 42-point gap, the so-called net rising index, was the greatest since the last three months of 1999.

The gains helped profits, with an index reading of 15 that was the highest since the first quarter of 2002. Although companies firing workers exceeded those hiring workers by 9 percentage points, the gap was the smallest in 21/2 years. The percentage planning to add workers in the next six months rose.

"The good news for employment is that expectations for future hiring are slightly brighter," said Duncan Meldrum, the group's president and chief economist at Air Products & Chemicals in Allentown, Pa. "This clearly supports the stronger" economic outlook the group issued last month.

The Washington-based association also projected that the world's largest economy will expand 4 percent in 2004. It was the biggest rise since 4.1 percent in 1999 and much higher than the forecast of 2.6 percent for this year.

The share of companies that hired more workers in the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, rose from 11 percent to 13 percent in the previous three months.

Twenty-one percent said they were planning to hire in the next six months, up from 20 percent last quarter. Companies in finance and services were the most optimistic about future hiring, the report said.

Source: National Business Economists.