First-quarter hiring plans in the Syracuse area are down slightly from last year but still positive, according to a survey released in December.

The Syracuse metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has a net employment outlook of 5 percent for the first quarter of 2013, found the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. The net employment outlook subtracts the portion of employers that expect to reduce staffing from the portion that anticipate hiring.

 The region’s outlook fell from 7 percent in the same quarter last year and 7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012.

Still, the 5 percent net employment outlook foreshadows hiring at a “moderate pace,” according to Manpower, which is a division of Milwaukee–based ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN).

Cuts were planned at 7 percent of the Syracuse MSA’s employers, compared to hiring that was in the works at 12 percent. A majority of employers, 79 percent, expect to maintain their current number of employees, while 2 percent weren’t certain what they would do with their staffing levels.

However, the manager of Manpower’s branches in Syracuse and Oneida, Peter DeBottis, believes businesses may add workers at a slightly higher rate now that Congress has passed legislation pertaining to the Jan. 1 fiscal cliff.

“A lot of employers were interested to see what was going to happen with the fiscal cliff,” he says. “I think it was wait-and-see. Now that it’s been resolved, I think people are going to go back to functioning.”

Top jobs being filled through the Syracuse and Oneida offices include human resources, engineering, technical, and high-level sales positions, DeBottis says. And the offices are working to fill more permanent positions than temporary ones, he adds.

“So that’s a commitment,” says DeBottis, whose Manpower territory stretches from the west of Auburn to the east of Utica and from Lowville in the north to Tully in the south. “Those are more high-dollar positions, and that’s a commitment for growth.”

The Syracuse MSA’s net employment outlook trailed the rest of the nation’s outlook. The national net employment outlook for the first quarter of 2013 jumped to 12 percent.

That’s up 9 percentage points from the same quarter of 2012. It’s also a 1-point increase from the fourth quarter of 2012 and the strongest first-quarter hiring outlook since 2008.

Nationally, employers said they planned to hire in 12 of 13 industry sectors measured in the Manpower survey. Those sectors included wholesale and retail trade, which had a positive outlook of 17 percent, as well as leisure and hospitality, which posted an outlook of 14 percent.

Other positive national outlooks were in professional and business services at 13 percent, information at 12 percent, financial activities at 11 percent, education and health services at 8 percent, government at 8 percent, mining at 7 percent, other services at 7 percent, durable-goods manufacturing at 5 percent, nondurable-goods manufacturing at 5 percent, and transportation and utilities at 4 percent. The sole sector with a negative outlook was construction at -2 percent.

Manpower polled more than 18,000 employers across the United States and in Puerto Rico for its survey. The staffing firm releases its Employment Outlook Surveys quarterly.

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com