Companies add jobs in March

WASHINGTON -- Companies added more workers in March, a sign the labor market may be strengthening, data from a private report based on payrolls showed Wednesday.

Employment increased by 201,000 workers in March after a revised 208,000 gain in February, according to figures from ADP Employer Services. The median estimate in the Bloomberg News survey called for a 208,000 gain.

Gains in capital investment and consumer spending are prompting companies to boost staff, helping the United States weather the highest energy prices in more than two years. Businesses added 210,000 jobs in March and the jobless rate held at 8.9 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show in two days.

"This data is pointing to a turnaround in labor-market conditions," Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis, which produces the report in conjunction with ADP, said in a conference call with reporters. "It's pretty clear that employment now has in fact accelerated. Equally encouraging is the breadth of the strength."

Local employment experts said Wednesday that they're noticing a turnaround as well.

"We're definitely seeing more activity, and more search requests," said Bill Werksman, managing partner of Las Vegas placement agency Resource Partners. "We're starting to see hiring recover on a more consistent basis. It's not sporadic -- it's starting to show a more gradual climb in a positive direction."

Werksman said employers are especially interested in executive prospects, candidates with technical skills, and sales and marketing experts. Where Resource Partners might have had five or so sales positions to fill for clients six months ago, they have about 10 such possibilities now.

The noticeable uptick began in January, Werksman said, and it's been particularly strong in the finance and computer-engineering fields.

"I think people are just feeling more confident that the economy is recovering and that we are going to have a more consistent basis for that recovery," he said. "People are starting to buy replacement equipment that they'd held off on, or invest in newer products, where before, they weren't necessarily taking those risks."

It's a trend Ron Finken sees as well.

Finken, chief executive officer of Accurate Building Maintenance in Las Vegas, hired nine employees in March -- six of them replacing workers who left for a variety of reasons, and three of them filling new positions Finken created to handle the 130-employee company's expanding client base.

Finken credited the improved sales partly to his company's increased business-development efforts, but he said he also senses that businesses are more willing these days to spend on maintenance.

"I think a lot of businesses were just letting things go the way they were because things were flat or down. Maybe instead of having us empty the trash five days a week, they'd have us do it three times a week," Finken said. "Now that things appear to be getting better, they're making adjustments and requiring more services. We're starting to see them come back to needing full service."

Like Werksman, Finken traced the rebound's beginning back to January.

"In January 2010, the faucet went off. In January 2011, it seemed like it started flowing again a little bit," he said.

Finken said he expects his sales and employee counts to grow about 20 percent through the end of 2011. Accurate does a lot of business with schools, and schools with in-house custodial staffs are increasingly looking to outsource their cleaning services to save on costs, Finken said. Plus, Accurate will continue to focus on business development to rustle up new contracts in other areas.

Another report Wednesday showed employers announced fewer job cuts in March than the same month last year, even as government payroll cutbacks climbed to the highest level in a year. Planned firings decreased 39 percent to 41,528 this month from March 2010, according to Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Public employees accounted for almost half of all job cuts.

Over the previous six reports, ADP's initial figures were closest to the Labor Department's first estimate of private payrolls in February, when it understated the gain in jobs by 5,000. The estimate was least accurate in December, when it overestimated the employment gain by 184,000.

The Labor Department report will be released Friday.

Review-Journal writer Jennifer Robison contributed to this report.