If you’re like me, you’re sick and tired of all the bad economic news and desperate for a sign that things are starting to turn around. Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but I think I might have found some.

The HR mega-consulting firm Watson Wyatt just released a survey suggesting that many companies have put the drastic job cuts behind them. They’re still settling in for what they expect to be at least a year or two of recession. But the cost-cutting measures they anticipate making going forward are much more modest.

Here are some of the findings of the survey of 245 U.S. HR executives:

• 52% said they’ve made layoffs (up from 39% two months ago) but only 13% are planning them (down from 23%)
• 42% have frozen salaries, more than triple the 13% who reported salary freezes two months earlier, but only 14% expect to implement a freeze going forward
• 56% have implemented a hiring freeze but only 10% plan to do so in the next 12 months
• 44% have cut or eliminated seasonal hiring but only 9% plan to trim their seasonal hires in the year ahead.

Okay, it’s not exactly “Happy Days Are Here Again.” But at least it’s something. And that’s better than the steady stream of nothing that we’ve been getting in the past few months.

Source: Watson Wyatt survey, “Effect of the Economic Crisis on HR Programs, Feb. 2009,” https://www.watsonwyatt.com/news/pdfs/WT-2009-11232.pdf

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