Job openings up sharply in January to 2.7M

WASHINGTON — As many as 300,000 jobs may be added in March, a four-year high, setting the stage for what some economists believe will be sustained employment gains.

Job openings climbed sharply earlier this year, evidence that employers are ramping up. The number of openings in January rose about 7.6 percent, to 2.7 million, compared with December, the Labor Department said. That's the highest total since February 2009.

The openings, combined with better weather, hiring of temporary government census workers and a growing economy, may bring the biggest job increases since March 2006, said David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.

A net monthly increase in jobs would be the second since President Obama took office in January 2009.

Hiring is critical to sustain the economic recovery because job growth boosts incomes and helps restore the confidence needed to drive consumer spending. A gradual increase in net hiring would help prevent the recovery from fizzling.

The Labor Department last week reported February payrolls dropped by 36,000, smaller than the 68,000 forecast by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

If you didn't count job losses at business closed by East Coast snowstorms and job gains from temporary government hiring for the 2010 census, payrolls would have actually climbed by about 100,000 positions, Greenlaw said Tuesday.

"We expect a sharp snapback in March payrolls as well," said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital in New York, the most accurate forecaster in a Bloomberg News survey in December. He didn't give a specific estimate.

Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs Group in New York, said in a March 6 e-mail to customers that he anticipates payrolls this month will climb by about 275,000.

About 50,000 of that represents the "underlying trend" in employment, he said, with about 100,000 attributable to better weather and 125,000 to the census.

It's "more likely" that monthly payroll gains this year will hover in the 100,000 range rather than climb to the 250,000 to 300,000 seen in previous recoveries, Hatzius said, because the boost to economic growth from government stimulus and efforts to rebuild inventories will wane later this year.

Still, Goldman Sachs lowered its unemployment forecast for early 2011 by one-quarter point to 10.25 percent as a result of the February jobs report.

More upbeat is Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York. He said he anticipates an average 300,000 new jobs in each of the next three to four months.

A March payroll gain of as much as 450,000 "can't be ruled out," he said, and further increases are "going to convince people of the sustainability and durability of the recovery."

The Obama administration has yet to predict job gains for March. The Labor Department is scheduled to release those figures April 2.

The economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since the recession began, the largest drop since the 1930s. The U.S. jobless rate, unchanged last month at 9.7 percent, hasn't increased since October, even as more people entered the work force.

Still, most economists expect the rate to remain elevated for several years.

The gradually brightening picture corresponds to what many job-search Web sites report. The Monster employment index, a measure of online postings by the job board Monster.com, rose 2 percent in February compared with the previous year.

That was the first year-over-year increase since December 2007, when the recession began, Monster said.

Indeed.com, which aggregates job listings from thousands of online career boards and individual company sites, also reported improvement. It said last week that 10 of the 12 industries it tracks posted more job openings in February than they did a year ago.

Management-consulting firm Accenture plans to hire 50,000 employees worldwide by the end of August, according to spokesman Alex Pachetti. More than 7,000 of those jobs, including technology and consulting positions, will be in the United States, he said.