Manpower survey shows weakening hiring intentions

The quarterly hiring intentions survey from Manpower is out today and shows the declining trend that has been in place all of last year continues with the seasonally adjusted hiring intentions score falling from 12 to 10:

As you can see, the survey has so far failed to diagnose with any accuracy the strong slowdown in the labour market last year, when virtually no net jobs were created, nor the pick up in the first quarter. Still the overall trend down is probably right, in my view. State by state isn’t surprising:

Nor is sector by sector, although the positive vibe in manufacturing clashes with other surveys and may show that this survey is biased to the upside:

MEOS-AU_Q3-2012