Jobs outlook like 1980's

Employment projections for 1981 by major corporations are more optimistic than they were in the last half of 1980, but strikingly resemble the forecasts for the beginning of that year. This is based on findings from the latest Deutsch, Shea & Evans semiannual Employment Level Forecast Survey.

"We would have expected the change in the administration, particularly the advent of a business-oriented president, to have resulted in more optimistic estimates," says Frank Coss, DS&E's executive vice-president. "But while we remain in a basically recessionary economy, this continues to have little effect on the prospective high demand for engineers, scientists, and electronic data processing (EDP) professionals; a situation which has existed now for more than three years."

The executives who responded to this most recent survey anticipate a stable to moderately optimistic picture for the year ahead: Only 16 percent foresee a decline in overall employment in their organizations, compared with the 39 percent who in June 1980 expected a decrease in the last half of that year. For 1981, 80 percent of the responding companies expect overall employment levels in their organizations to either remain stable (42 percent) or to increase (38 percent). That figure was 81 percent in January 1980, when 39 percent expected total employment to increase and 42 percent expec ted a stable picture. Fourteen percent foresaw a decrease.