U.S. Hiring Binge Should Continue Companies Across Spectrum Will Add Workers

Companies across the spectrum of U.S. industry, from high-tech Microsoft Corp. to low-tech McDonald’s Corp., plan to continue their hiring binge in the new year, executives and analysts said.

“We need people immediately,” said Rebecca Hayne of truck and bus maker Navistar International Corp., which is hiring 400 engineers at its technology center in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Navistar isn’t alone. Boeing Co. has added close to 40,000 workers in the last two years as it grapples with record aircraft orders. Even International Business Machines Corp., which just a few years ago was axing people, expanded its payroll by 15,000 workers in 1996 and expects to match that number this year.

Atlanta-based Home Depot Inc. - which added 20,000 workers this year - recently announced plans to create 10,000 jobs in California over the next two years with the opening of 61 additional building supply stores in the state.

And while the economic crisis in Asia may already be blunting the growth that contributed to the addition of 2.8 million new U.S. jobs in the first 11 months of this year, there’s little evidence so far that hiring plans are being altered in response to the Asia slowdown.

Indeed, while Philip Morris Cos. and Hasbro Inc. Tuesday joined the growing list of companies saying they will fire tens of thousands of workers, the larger message from the job front is that the hiring window remains open.

“The job picture hasn’t been this bright in 24 or 25 years,” said Gretchen Kreske, manager of strategic information at Manpower Inc., a Milwaukee-based personnel placement and training company.

High tech leads the pack, “growing like mad, hiring people by the hundreds every month,” said John Challenger of the Chicago employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. has added about 3,000 workers this year and plans to take on an additional 4,000 in 1998, said Mark Murray, a company spokesman. Much of IBM’s growth has been in business services, which helps companies determine the types of computer networks they need to operate more efficiently.

Late Tuesday, though, software designer Oracle Corp. threw a damper on expectations for technology companies, reporting that sales of its key database programs rose 3 percent for the quarter ended Nov. 30, while analysts were anticipating a 20 percent increase.

With the fast-growing Asian market accounting for 15 percent of Oracle’s business, a drop in sales to that region contributed to the company’s broader falloff in performance, analysts said. That in turn could stifle hiring.

But Oracle’s problems don’t extend to the entire industry. Consider the demand for software designers. “Software developers are needed everywhere, not just by communications companies. You’re seeing a lot of banks going after software programmers,” said Bill Price, a spokesman for Lucent Technologies, Inc.

Lucent, a high-tech company based in Murray Hill, N.J., that was spun off from AT&T Corp. in 1996, added 4,000 jobs in fiscal 1997, bringing total employment to 125,000.

New York-based AT&T is also hiring. “We had 130,000 employees at the beginning of the year and our most recent numbers are at 133,000 as of the end of the third quarter,” said AT&T’s Michael Lordi.

Lower-tech businesses are also in search of workers. Hamburger chain McDonald’s Corp. will add about 300 U.S. restaurants next year, creating about 15,000 new jobs, said Chuck Ebeling, spokesman for the Oak Brook, Illinois-based chain.

Oil companies will spend more to find oil and natural gas in 1998 and expect to hire more front-line workers, such as drillers, amid growing global demand and stable prices, according to Arthur Andersen’s 10th annual U.S. oil and gas industry outlook survey. The survey was based on responses from executives at 94 companies.