Hiring projections for the second quarter of 2006 continue to run ahead of last year's figures, according to results from BNA's latest quarterly employment survey.

Hiring prospects look especially bright for production and service workers. Nearly three in 10 employers (29%) plan to add staff in the production and service category during the second quarter of 2006, up from employer projections of 23% last quarter and 18% for the same period one year ago.

Employment prospects also remain strong for technical and professional employees. Nearly three in 10 employers (28%) anticipate adding new staff in the technical and professional category during the second quarter of 2006. The 28% figure is up from 22% recorded for the second quarter one year ago, but down 5 percentage points from last quarter, when projections for technical and professional staff hit a 10-year high (33%).

Hiring prospects have remained stable for office and clerical employees. Fifteen percent of respondents plan to add office and clerical staff in the second quarter of 2006, virtually unchanged from last quarter (14%) and the same period one year ago (14%).

Fewer employers are reporting difficulties filling vacant positions. In what is traditionally among the most challenging areas for staffing, one in three employers (33%) report problems filling vacancies in professional and technical positions, down 7 percentage points from last quarter (40%), and a modest drop from the same period last year (36%).

A similar pattern is evident for production and service positions, with 15% of employers reporting problems filling existing vacancies. The 15% figure is down from 22% reported last quarter and 20% one year ago. Not surprisingly, manufacturing firms tend to have far more difficulty filling production and service vacancies (30%) than their nonmanufacturing and non business counterparts (12% and 4%, respectively).

The proportion of employers indicating difficulties filling office and clerical positions (5%) has also declined from last quarter (8%) and from the first quarter of 2005 (9%).

For more information or copies of previous reports, contact BNA PLUS at 800-372-1033.

AT& T Announces Acquisition of BellSouth

The prediction of a busy hiring season ahead is good news for workers who may be job-hunting due to job cuts or mergers.

In recent merger news, AT& T announced a deal to acquire BellSouth Corp. The deal is likely to produce 10,000 job redundancies over three years, most of which are expected to be resolved through attrition, AT& T said in a conference call March 6, the day after announcing the acquisition plan.

The $67.1 billion telecommunications acquisition, to be completed next year subject to approval by shareholders and government regulators, would in effect blend three companies. Cingular Wireless, a joint venture of the domestic wireless divisions of AT& T and BellSouth, also would be brought into full AT& T ownership with the deal. AT& T said the three combined networks will become a single, fully integrated wireless and wireline Internet Protocol network.

AT& T has not identified the job functions or geographic locations where it expects the redundancies, company spokesman Walt Sharp said. The company's average attrition rate of 1,200 jobs per month makes it possible to make the job cuts through attrition, according to Sharp. In February 2005, SBC Communications Inc. said it expected to eliminate 13,000 jobs through attrition as part of its integration of AT& T in addition to workforce reductions of at least 10,000 positions announced three months earlier.

San Antonio-based AT& T, the largest U.S. telecommunications company, has about 189,000 employees. BellSouth, with headquarters in Atlanta, employs about 63,000 people and operates in nine Southeastern states.

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