Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Employers in the U.S. plan to maintain hiring in the fourth quarter at the same pace as in the prior six months, according to a private survey released today.

Manpower Inc., the world's second-largest provider of temporary workers, said its employment index for September through December held at 18 for a third consecutive quarter.

``Employers in most segments are really still hiring,'' Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive officer of Milwaukee-based Manpower, said in an interview. ``We're still seeing an appetite to increase payrolls as businesses get slightly more demand.''

The report may help ease concern that the unexpected drop in hiring last month, the first in four years, signals the start of a sustained slackening in the job market that jeopardizes growth. Companies have kept payrolls lean throughout the six- year economic expansion, suggesting little need for massive firings now, Joerres said.

Employers cut 4,000 jobs in August after an increase of 68,000 the prior month that was smaller than previously estimated, the Labor Department reported last week. Payroll gains in the first six months of the year averaged 134,000 per month.

The unemployment rate held at 4.6 percent as the workforce shrank, the Labor report also showed.

Before adjusting for seasonal variations, 27 percent of the roughly 14,000 companies surveyed by Manpower said they will add to payrolls in the fourth quarter, down from 29 percent in the previous three months. The figure was down from 28 percent a year ago.

Majority Little Changed

Nine percent said they'd trim payrolls in the coming quarter, and 58 percent anticipated no change from the prior quarter's pace of hiring, the survey showed.

The overall index subtracts the percentage of employers planning to cut jobs from those who plan to add workers and adjusts the results for seasonal variations.

The economy grew at an average 2.3 percent pace in the first half of the year, compared with a 2.9 percent rate of expansion for all of 2006, according to data from the Commerce Department.

Growth will also average about 2.3 percent in the last six month of 2007, according to economists surveyed this month by Bloomberg News. The forecast was down from the 2.6 percent projected in the August survey. The full brunt of the slowdown caused by the subprime mortgage crisis won't hit the economy until the fourth quarter, economists said.

Range of Views

Federal Reserve bank presidents offered a range of views on the economy and the drop in employment in recent days.

Declining home prices and rising unemployment pose ``significant'' risks to consumer spending, said Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Fed. Charles Plosser, head of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, said during the weekend that policy makers shouldn't put too much stress on the loss of jobs in August.

While the employment drop ``was not encouraging,'' Plosser said in an interview following a Sept. 8 speech, ``there's a lot of conflicting data out there,'' he also said, noting gains in retail sales.

The Fed's next policy meeting is Sept. 18. Futures contracts are pricing a certain cut in the benchmark rate, the first since 2003.

Six of the 10 industries surveyed by Manpower -- construction, finance and real estate, non-durable manufacturing, mining, transportation and utilities, and wholesale and retail trade -- projected weaker hiring next quarter compared with the previous three months.

Demand for workers at commercial projects has helped offset some of the decline in residential real estate to prevent overall construction hiring from falling even more, economists said. Total construction payrolls have fallen by 96,000 since reaching a high of 7.7 million in September 2006. Manufacturing payrolls are down 203,000 over the same time.

Industry Breakdown

Compared with a year earlier, employers in all areas except public administration and education were less inclined to add staff, the Manpower data showed.

Regionally, employers in the Northeast and South predicted a decreased pace of hiring in the fourth quarter from the prior three months, while those in the Midwest and West foresaw stronger employment, according to the survey.

Outside the U.S., employers in all 26 other countries and territories surveyed by Manpower, except Italy, plan to add workers in the fourth quarter. Hiring will pick up in 11 countries and territories compared with the third quarter.

Globally, hiring plans in Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden and Germany were among the strongest. Employers in Belgium and France had the weakest hiring intentions while executives in Italy have no plans to hire.

The Manpower survey is conducted quarterly and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.8 percentage point in the U.S. and no more than plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for national, regional and global data.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Willis in Washington bwillis@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 11, 2007 00:06 EDT