Employment opportunities may decline for this year’s fourth quarter in the DeKalb area.

Manpower, a temporary staffing company, released today the results of its fourth-quarter employment outlook survey.

Michelle Luther, Sycamore branch manager, 2492 DeKalb Ave., said 20 percent of companies interviewed plan to hire more employees between October and December as opposed to last quarter’s 43 percent.

Three percent of employers plan to let employees go during the fourth quarter. The net hiring percentage will be 17 percent, she said.

Of the remaining employers, 67 percent planned to maintain current staff numbers and 10 percent did not know if they would hire or not, according to the survey.

The percentage of employers hiring new employees reflects a 23 percent decrease from the third quarter this year.

“Unfortunately, it is significantly weaker than last quarter,” Luther said.

The survey reported that the percentage of employers planning to let workers go, 3 percent, remained the same from the third to the fourth quarter.

Luther said the economic outlook is more positive this fourth quarter than last year’s, when 17 percent of employers interviewed planned to hire and 13 percent planned to let employees go.

With a net hiring percentage of 4 percent, the fourth quarter of 2003 represented the worst outlook in 10 years, Luther said.

Luther conducted the survey of DeKalb and Sycamore employers during the last week of July.

The results of the next survey covering the outlook for the first quarter of 2005 will be available Dec. 14.