** Soft Employment Numbers? **
Still, ``the employment situation is not all that soft,'' said Richard Yamarone, senior economist at Argus Research Corp. in New York. ``And that means there are more people earning more money and that equips them with spending potential.'' About 35 percent of businesses said they planned to increase recruiting efforts in the coming quarter, according to a recent Manpower Inc.'s quarterly survey of about 16,000 companies. The hiring plans are the highest in the survey's 24-year history. MRT Technology, a maker of compact discs and digital video discs, plans to open a plant in Ontario, California, where it will employee 300 people, Southern California Edison said earlier this month. Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International, said it helped bring MRT to Ontario by assembling a package of tax credits and training assistance. Surveys have shown the number of planned job cuts by U.S. businesses declined in May from a year earlier. Planned cuts fell 51 percent to 27,036 last month from 55,231 a year earlier, according to the survey by the employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. |
