TORONTO, Ont. — Canadian job seekers should expect slim pickins from April to June, according to a recent Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.

The survey of more than 1,900 Canadian employers reveals that 15% expect to increase their payrolls in the second quarter of 2009, while 9% anticipate cutbacks for a Net Employment Outlook (NEO) 6%. Of those polled, 73% of employers plan to maintain their current workforce and 3% are unsure of their hiring intentions for the upcoming quarter.

With seasonal variations removed from the survey data the NEO drops to a mere 1%, which should indicate a quiet hiring climate for the second quarter of 2009. This quarter’s forecast is 17 percentage points weaker than in the previous quarter when the seasonally adjusted NEO was 18%.

In the Transporting and Public Utilities sector in particular, the seasonally adjusted NEO has dropped to 4%. This is a decrease from the same time last year when the NEO was 8%, and a further 13 percentage point decline from the previous quarter when the seasonally adjusted NEO was 17%.

“This quarter’s Net Employment Outlook indicates that the employer hiring confidence reported in the previous quarter has decreased,” says Lori Rogers, vice-president of operations for Manpower Canada. “Canadian employers are telling us that while they will continue to increase their payrolls they will do so at a more cautious pace than in the previous quarters.”