Jul. 1--Hiring will be slow in Orange County this summer but could end up being better than expected based on an uptick in recent weeks in requests for temporary workers, said Karen Tarca, a spokeswoman for Manpower Inc., the temporary staffing agency.

About 13 percent of employers in the Santa Ana-Los Angeles-Long Beach area plan to add staff from July to September, according to the latest quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. That's up from 12 percent in the second quarter.

Layoffs, however, are easing, with 17 percent of those surveyed planning to cut staff this quarter, down from 23 percent during the last three months.

Temp hiring is an important economic indicator because many employers will turn to temps when business first begins to pick up but before they are confident enough the turnaround is for real.

Any increase would be good news for Orange County, where unemployment hit 8.6 percent for May, tied with April for the highest rate on records dating back to 1990. A year ago, the local jobless rate was 4.7 percent.

Tarca says the overall job market appears to have stabilized and is much improved over the fourth quarter of 2008, when temp hiring virtually came to a halt.

"In terms of the U.S., we've had 10 weeks of stability in our organization which is a very positive trend that we haven't seen in more than a year," Tarca said.

In Orange County, where Manpower has four offices, she said hiring stabilized over the last two months, but in the last couple of weeks there's been a slight increase.

"It's definitely not where it was last year but we are seeing signs of a pickup," she said.

Among those who are adding temps are banks, which are beefing up their mortgage refinance staff, and the hospitality industry, which usually brings on more people during the summer tourist season, Tarca said.

Business also is good in the medical device industry and at pharmaceutical companies.

Who's not hiring? "Anything related to construction," she said.

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