Employers in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys are more sanguine about their hiring prospects in the first quarter than are their colleagues in central Los Angeles and in the South Bay area.

At least that’s the indication of the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey for the first quarter.

When asked if they expect to increase or decrease their payrolls in the first quarter, 37 percent of employers in the San Fernando Valley said they expected to increase their payrolls and only 7 percent said they expected to cut them. (The remainder said payrolls would stay the same or they didn’t know.)

Employers in the San Gabriel Valley were almost as optimistic: 31 percent expected to increase payrolls while 4 percent expected to cut them. Those are better-than-average numbers for the state.

But employers were less optimistic in the Long Beach/South Bay area: 27 percent expected to increase payrolls while 23 percent expected to decrease them.

And in the central Los Angeles area, employers were almost sour: 18 percent expected to increase and an identical 18 percent expected to decrease payroll.

Manpower did not offer an explanation for the differences. However, the survey did point out that the Los Angeles numbers were an improvement from the fourth quarter, when only 14 percent of employers had expected to increase head counts and 25 percent planned to cut them.

Statewide, 30 percent of employers expect to boost head county and 13 percent expect to cut.