The pace of work-force reductions is about 40 percent ahead of last year. However, a new report shows that, through September, employers already had announced plans to hire more workers than they did in all of 2008.

The report released Oct. 12 by global outplacement consulting company Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., indicates that some employers see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel confident enough about the prospects of the recovery to begin adding workers, albeit slowly.

Through September, employers had announced plans to hire 169,385 workers this year, according to Challenger's tracking.

That's 88 percent more than the 89,924 planned hires announced in the first three quarters of 2008. The 2009 nine-month total, in fact, already has surpassed the 2008 year-end total of 118,600.

Surprisingly, most of the hiring plans announced this year have come from employers in the retail sector, which has struggled amid falling consumer spending. These employers announced plans to hire 33,640 workers, compared with less than 4,000 in all of 2008.

The biggest hiring sector behind retail is the government and nonprofit sector, which has plans to add 28,469 workers, according to the report. It's followed by the entertainment and leisure industry, which is adding 22,370 new workers.

"Of course, these figures represent just a tiny fraction of the hiring and available jobs out there," says John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "We track hiring announcements, but the vast majority of employers do not make formal hiring announcements unless they are building a plant, opening a new facility or store, or announcing expansion plans that might affect their stock value."

Challenger says, "Even newspaper and online help wanted ads do not tell the whole story when it comes to hiring and job availability. In fact, help-wanted ads probably represent less than half of the actual job openings and possibly as little as 20 percent. Within the hidden job market are companies that plan to fill positions through employee referrals, those that use recruiters to find the right candidates, as well as those that have no plans to hire, but will do so if the right person comes along."

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that there were about 2.4 million job openings as of August. That was down from 3.9 million job openings a year earlier.

"It can be discouraging when all you hear about are the economy shedding an average of 300,000 jobs per month and unemployment rising to 9.8 percent," Challenger says, "but the fact is the labor market is extremely fluid, even in the worst of times. Companies are constantly adding and subtracting workers, sometimes simultaneously."