This article is from page 34 of the 2008-07-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 34 JPG
THE latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, has found Munster employers remain the most optt- mistic in the country with seven per cent of employers planning on hiring more staff in the next three months. Regionally, Munster employers re- corded the highest outlook recorded by any region for the quarter. Ac- cording to the employment agency figures, this figure was “closely fol- lowed by Dublin employers (five per
cent) and Leinster employers (four per cent) who are, as a whole, remain- ing optimistic about future growth. In contrast, Ulster has reported the weakest employment outlook of mi- nus eight per cent, which shows a significant decline of 20 percentage points since last quarter. Connaught employers have also reported a dis- appointing employment outlook of minus two per cent.
Despite serious job losses and a sig- nificant number of business closures in Ennis. Official figures show that
Clare had just half the number of company failures in the six months to the end of June 2008 that it had in the same period in 2007.
Between January and June 2007, ten companies went to the wall in the county, This year, just five have closed their doors in that time.
The Manpower survey also shows that Ireland’s Net Employment Out- look for the next three months is just three per cent, the third weakest forecast of hiring intentions reported across the globe for this quarter.
The figure of three per cent is Ire- land’s overall ‘Net Employment Outlook’ figure which is calculated by taking the percentage of employ- ers anticipating total employment to increase and subtracting from this the percentage expecting to see a de- crease in employment at their loca- tion in the next quarter.
Ireland’s Net Employment Outlook of three per cent is second only to Spain (0 per cent) as the weakest em- ployment outlook while India (47 per cent), Peru (40 per cent) have report-
ed strongest employment outlooks. The Manpower Employment Out- look Survey, which measured 686 Irish employers’ intentions to in- crease or decrease their workforces over next three months, reveals that employer confidence in the mining and quarrying and the construction industry sectors has weakened by 33 and 27 percentage points respec- tively since last year. The restaurant and hotel sector has also undergone a steep decline, with employers report- ing a 22 percentage point decrease.