A survey suggests that hiring should pick up as 2011 progresses.

Dice Holdings says slightly more than half (51 percent) of employers and recruiters anticipate hiring more professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the previous six months.  Companies expecting a step-up in hiring in the next six months represented a broad spectrum of industries, including energy, technology, telecom, media, internet, distribution, financial services, consulting and retail.

Here is yet another reminder that job growth will continue to be slow for a period of time.

A survey by Robert Half found that an equal percentage of chief financial officers expect to boost hiring full-time accounting and finance professionals as those who plan to reduce their job ranks.

A Towers Watson survey found that companies are budgeting merit pay hikes of 3 percent for 2011. This compares with the average 2.7 percent merit increase awarded to employees in 2010 and is the largest merit increase since before the financial crisis when increases typically averaged 3.5 percent to 4 percent, according to the benefits consultancy.

Companies are also planning to provide some reinforcements for their overworked employees.

It is all about growth.

Finance execs are more upbeat about their hiring plans. And this is happening at the same time they are concerned about issues like health care reform, the budget deficit and housing.

More than half of chief financial officers at smaller companies say they plan to hire additional workers in the near future.

According to the latest quarterly survey of CFOs conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, 56.5 percent of CFOs said they plan to hire more people in the next six months. A little more than 28 percent said they have no hiring plans while the rest said it is too soon to determine.

Small business owners prefer spending money on their company than on people.

According to a new biannual survey which gauges the mood and sentiment of small and medium sized business owners, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) plan to increase capital spending during the next six months. This is up sharply from 49 percent in the spring, according to the PNC Economic Outlook survey.

Seems the employment outlook for jobs in accounting and finance is looking up ever so slightly.

Eight percent of 1,400 CFOs surveyed by Robert Half International plan to hire full-time accounting and finance employees in the fourth quarter, while 7 percent anticipate reducing staff. The net, of course, is a 1 percent increase. While that's not exactly a number to get very excited about, it's the first net increase since the first quarter of 2009, according to Robert Half.  Most CFOs (84 percent) expect to make no changes to their personnel levels.

Google has proved itself to be a major US corporation, but that isn't always a good thing, at least among tech firms. In fact, Google in some ways has reason to regret the loss of its status as a start-up.

The company said in April its first-quarter results jumped 23 percent and the company posted good metrics, with a 7 percent increase in average cost-per-clicks, which fuels sales. But it wasn't enough for many investors. Now the Internet giant is trying to copy Facebook, which surpasses Google in many ways.

Chief financial officers' confidence continues to rise, but has yet to translate into concrete improvements such as increased hiring, a new survey finds.

The survey, conducted by Financial Executives International and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business and released Friday, showed that the CFO Optimism Index for the US economy rose nearly 33 percent during the first quarter, to 58.14 from an all-time low of 38.96 a year ago. Any measurement above 50 indicates that CFOs are more optimistic than pessimistic about the economy. An index measuring CFOs' optimism about their companies also increased during the quarter and was up sharply from a year earlier.

Seems we're seeing tepid indications of a pick up in hiring. For one thing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just announced an increase in 162,000 nonfarm jobs in March and that the unemployment rate is holding steady.  What 's more,  there are also signs of more hiring going on among very small businesses, those with under 20 employees.

That last point could be really good news, because employment among such companies is supposed to be a leading indicator of recovery, since they tend to increase hiring before  more bureaucratic and less-nimble bigger firms do.