Survey: Hiring Intentions For First 3 Months Of 2019 At 12-Year High

Wisconsin employers expect to hire more people in the first three months of 2019 than during the same time frame last year. The percentage of companies that expect to bring on more staff reached a 12-year high, according to the most recent hiring outlook survey by the staffing firm ManpowerGroup.

The Milwaukee-based company published its quarterly hiring outlook Tuesday. It found while the United States as a whole is also seeing a 12-year high in hiring intentions, there’s a slightly better hiring outlook in Wisconsin.

The survey found 28 percent of the employers expected to add employees to their staff while five percent expected to cut back. The portion of Wisconsin companies planning to hire next quarter is five percentage points higher than employers looking to add workers nationwide.

But Amber Laurent, a market principal for ManpowerGroup, said even if all of Wisconsin’s currently unemployed residents were hired, there would still be a need for workers.

“There would still be over 190,000 open positions throughout the state of Wisconsin,” she said.

To address a lack of workers in Wisconsin, companies are trying to attract out-of-state workers and train employees in-house to move up, Laurent said.

“People employed currently may not have the technological skills needed as quickly as the economy is advancing,” she said.

Laurent said for employers, this means developing programs that will equip current employees to perform the needs of their business a year from now. For employees, it could translate to being more flexible as their industry changes.

Take manufacturing, said Laurent.

“We’ve heard this for quite a while, but manufacturing as a whole is becoming more technological. So the positions that we heard of growing up as children as a dirty manufacturing job or not a glamorous type of a role is not necessarily the case for manufacturing roles of tomorrow,” she said.

Some of the industries expected to hire the most workers include durable and non-durable goods manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade and professional and business services.

Construction is a Wisconsin industry projected to cut back on staff, although that could be a seasonal drop, Laurent said the industry’s hiring has remained robust.