Leslie Bruno, president of Pro-Tech Security, says a lack of qualified candidates has been a factor in not accepting more business. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

The 450 employees at Las Vegas-based Pro-Tect Security should plan on making room for some new colleagues.

In the third quarter, say executives of Pro-Tect, a 27-year-old provider of security services to resorts, convention centers, hospitals, commercial parks and home builders, they hope to add as many as 100 new workers.

Several dynamics are driving the growth, said Pro-Tect President Leslie Bruno.

First, unrelenting growth in home building has yielded sustained need for security guards who stand watch against nighttime vandals at under-construction subdivisions. Plus, expansion in the convention market and the addition of new hotel rooms on the Strip and in the locals market have meant more work for the supplemental security Pro-Tect provides.

So Pro-Tect is hunting for security officers, supervisors and administrators to help the company capture a bigger share of the market's growth.

"We're still going strong," Bruno said.

A new survey from Manpower, a local employment agency, shows other businesses are going strong as well.

Las Vegas area employers expect to hire at a healthy pace during the third quarter, the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey found.

From July to September, 30 percent of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, while 10 percent expect to reduce their payrolls, said Andy Katz, owner of Manpower's Las Vegas office. The remaining 60 percent said they would maintain current staffing levels.

Katz said Las Vegas employers have weaker hiring intentions than in the second quarter, when 33 percent of companies interviewed intended to add staff and none planned to cut back. They're also not as positive as they were a year ago, when 57 percent of companies surveyed thought employment increases were likely.

Job prospects for the coming quarter appear best in transportation and public utilities; wholesale and retail trades; finance, insurance and real estate; and education.

At Las Vegas Day School, a private school that accepts students from preschool through eighth grade, major expansion plans mean new jobs for teachers and assistants.

Director Neil Daseler said Las Vegas Day School is in the midst of growing from 500 students to 1,000 students, adding 50 slots to each class in the next few years. Since early 2006, the school has brought on two new third-grade teachers and additional instructors in music, Spanish, art and physical education. Las Vegas Day School has a staff of 105 -- an employee count Daseler expects to increase to 110 in the next three months as he hires instructional aides for the coming academic year.

Like other local employers, Daseler said a burgeoning population and fast-growing economy have made his school's staff expansion possible.

"We've been very fortunate to be located in the Las Vegas area and to have the Las Vegas economy be as strong as it is," Daseler said. "The Las Vegas economy helps drive private education. If Las Vegas weren't a growing community, we wouldn't be able to grow as well as we have."

Increasing numbers of residents and businesses are also fomenting growth at Nevada Power Co.

Sonya Headen, a spokeswoman for the utility, said Nevada Power's customer base has jumped 5 percent to 6 percent annually in recent years.

To handle the new business, Nevada Power is constantly adding employees. Its parent company, Sierra Pacific Resources, has brought on more than 100 new employees across Nevada in 2006, and is looking to fill an additional 49 open positions in coming weeks. Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific have a combined 3,000 employees.

Headen said Nevada Power has jobs available at all pay scales, including entry-level meter-reading and management work in service delivery and internal auditing.

In the Manpower survey, employers in construction and services were mixed about hiring intentions. Hiring in nondurable goods, manufacturing and public administration is expected to remain unchanged.

Las Vegas showed annual job growth of 5.5 percent in April, according to the latest statistics from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

The industry with the largest monthly change was leisure and hospitality, which grew by about 2,900 jobs in April, followed by professional and business services (2,200 jobs) and construction (1,500 jobs).

Jim Shabi, an economist for the department, said today's Las Vegas job market looks weak only when compared with 2004 and 2005, when employment growth ranged from 6 percent to 8 percent.

Shabi said employers added 21,100 jobs statewide in April 2005, including 9,000 in the gaming sector when Wynn Las Vegas opened, creating difficult year-to-year comparisons.

With a surge in residential commercial building permits, construction employment grew by 11.1 percent over the past 12 months and continues to rise, said Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The only constraint on hiring, local employers say, is a thin crop of prospective candidates.

Bruno said she'd double her third-quarter growth to 200 new employees if she could find qualified workers who meet her standards.

But Pro-Tect must compete with multibillion-dollar resort developers for security staff. Though the pay at Pro-Tect is similar to wages at resorts -- $6 to $12 an hour, and more for retired police officers -- big businesses can sometimes offer meatier incentive packages than Pro-Tect can. The competition for workers has been especially stiff the past two years, Bruno said.

"My growth is somewhat impaired," Bruno said. "The problem is not getting new business. The problem is staffing insufficiently. I could easily sell all day and all night, but if we don't have the right personnel to send on jobs, that will cause problems for us."

To recruit and retain workers, Bruno offers benefits such as helping to pay for bus fares so workers can get to jobs and renting parking lots so employees don't have to pay to park at convention sites. She also provides discounted health, vision and dental insurance. She mines for candidates via classified ads in newspapers and through the Veterans Administration. Most successful, she's found, is a referral system that pays employees $100 if they recommend a prospect who joins Pro-Tect and stays on the job at least three months with no write-ups.

And yet, with a Las Vegas-area unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, it can be tough for local businesses to find reliable employees with a strong work ethic.

Said Bruno: "I could definitely accept more business if I had more quality candidates coming in, and frankly, (a lack of good candidates) has become an issue."

Staff writer Hubble Smith contributed to this report.