Georgia companies continue to feel optimistic about their hiring, forecasting more growth between April and June.

A new survey from staffing firm Manpower shows 18 percent of Georgia employers expect to hire in the coming months and 6 percent plan layoffs. Both numbers are an improvement over the first quarter of the year.

Manpower’s Rob Persiano said financial, telecom and manufacturing companies are showing growth, but soft spots remain.

“It just depends on that particular industry,” Persiano said. “We’re still going to see some challenges within [the] construction [industry] as well as in some of the government areas as they’ve probably tightened up a little bit more than some of what we’ve seen in some of the retail businesses or the financial areas.”

Persiano said companies are feeling better about hiring full-time workers because of more positive economic signs, and competition for job-seekers is starting to increase.

“We’ve got a lot of candidates that we’re talking to that have the opportunity to talk to four or five different companies that are hiring at this stage,” he said.

The state labor department reported earlier this month that Georgia’s unemployment rate in January fell to 9.2 percent, the sixth straight monthly decline. February’s numbers are due in the coming days.

The state gained nearly 84,000 jobs in the last year.

Tags: Manpower Inc., employment outlook, hiring, Joshua Stewart, Rob Persiano