Best employment outlook in the country?

If Cape Coral-Fort Myers is the most promising employment market in the nation, the rest of the country must really be struggling.

Manpower, the temporary staffing firm that published quarterly outlook surveys, says 21% of the companies it queried in Cape Coral-Fort Myers plan to add employees in the first quarter compared with 4% that plan to cut staff (the rest will maintain employment).

Manpower says that outlook is the best in the country.

Really? After all, employment growth in Cape Coral-Fort Myers was a modest 2.5% in October compared with the same month a year ago. That's better than employment losses of the last few years, but it's not exactly gangbusters.

Take such surveys with a grain of salt because what businesses say and do are often two different things. They're similar to consumer-confidence surveys that are notoriously unreliable indicators of spending.

In any case, it's great PR for our area and we'll be glad to see this prediction come true in the spring employment numbers. Stay tuned.