McKinsey Study Shows Workforces Will Expand

Only 16 percent of global executives say their workforces will shrink over the next six months, according to a new McKinsey study.

The consulting company’s survey of 9,346 executives around the world found that 43 percent expect their workforces to stay at the size they’re at now and 37 percent expect them to increase.

McKinsey says that IT and telecom companies are optimistic, particularly those that are in India. Business-services firms, whose executives McKinsey says “are also quite confident,” will lead the way in job growth in many other parts of the world.

Some renewed hiring
In the United States, several companies that have gone through layoffs in recent years report that they are hiring.

Cessna is looking for 500 people this year to assemble business jets, according to the Wichita Business Journal in Kansas. Guidant is hiring engineers, chemists, assemblers, technicians, inspectors and analysts, mostly in California, according to the Indianapolis Star. Black & Decker is hiring 250 people, many of them machinists, in Jackson, Tennessee, according to the Jackson Sun. Some of the 250 will be former Black & Decker employees; the company has eliminated hundreds of jobs in North Carolina.

In Rocky Mount, North Carolina, which is struggling because of the decline of tobacco and textile mills, the mayor is relieved to hear that a call-center company is going to turn a former Kmart into a call center, creating about 900 local jobs, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

The positive hiring news doesn’t mean that no one is downsizing. According to reports in several local newspapers as well as by the Vermont company AIRS, Tower Automotive is closing plants; BMC Software is scaling back in Houston and globally; and MetLife will cut several hundred jobs because of its acquisition of Travelers Life & Annuity.