US employers waiting and watching before hiring

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More employers in the United States plan to hire workers next quarter than in any period since the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a survey by Manpower Group, the global employment services giant.

The fewest workers on record were fired in January and job openings rebounded, showing employers are gaining confidence the U.S. expansion will be sustained even as lawmakers battle to trim the federal budget deficit. There were 1.51 million people let go in the month, down from 1.57 million in December and the least in data going back 12 years, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of positions waiting to be filled climbed by 81,000 to 3.69 million after slumping by 177,000 in December.

WASHINGTON

BusinessWeek - Joe Kight, a first-year student at Texas A&M University's Mays Business School (Mays Full-Time MBA Profile), says he knew the slow economic recovery would make for a difficult internship search. That's why he immediately headed to the career center on campus when he arrived at business school. His goal: to find a finance internship by the fall, when most of those firms are known to make offers to summer hires. With alumni contacts in New York in hand, he went to potential employers himself and found out about opportunities he never would have discovered on campus, he says.

Square is expanding at breakneck speed, doubling its workforce to 1,000 this year as it moves into a new headquarters.