If you really really want to work, pack your laptop and your best career clothes and head for Anchorage or Washington D.C.   Burlington, Vermont,  Memphis and Killeen, Texas, also may be profitable places to move.

According to a new Manpower report, they are among the metro areas with the strongest second-quarter hiring outlooks. Some  - notably Anchorage and Washington – have made the best places for jobs list several time.

They show up in a report that shows possibilities in many places. Hiring will “inch ahead,” Manpower said this morning in announcing this report. Twelve of the 13 industry sectors Manpower tracks expect positive net hiring in April through June, with construction and manufacturing experiencing notable improvements compared to a year ago.  The biggest gains, though, were in leisure and hospitality – good news for all the concierges, hotel managers and maids who have been looking for work.

Nationwide, 16 percent of employers expect to add to payrolls, while 8 percent are reducing them, according to Manpower’s survey of 18,000 workplaces. This means a net 8 percent hiring outlook for the second quarter —a continued gradual improvement from previous quarters.

“U.S. hiring activity is still in neutral, but revving toward first gear,” Jonas Prising, Manpower president of the Americas, said in a statement.

The overall modest hiring expectations has some exceptions, or exceptional metro areas, including:

• In Anchorage, a net 22 percent of employers are adding to staff, and the jobless rate — 7.7 percent– is pretty low.
• In Washington, D.C. 20 percent of employers expect to hire — and the jobless rate — 6.4 percent — has been among the lowest in the country for a while. (For more, check out my jobs outlook for the Beltway published in January in the Washington Post.)
• In Burlington, Vt., the jobless rate stands at 5.5 percent and a net 22 percent of employers are hiring in the weeks ahead.

These three each have hiring outlooks that are more than 2 1/2 times better than the United States as a whole.

Other cities where employers are growing ample jobs this spring include Fort Collins, Colo.; Greenville, SC.; Portland, Maine; Albany, N.Y.; Shreveport, LA and Raleigh, N.C.  About 16 to 17 percent of employers in Memphis and Milwaukee expect to bring on engineers and electricians, waiters and administrative assistants.  (There are more than five in the top five metro areas because several areas have tied net hiring scores.)

And workers still are moving for jobs. About one in seven job mid-level and higher seekers relocated to find new jobs last year, about the same as in previous years, according to a  separate Right Management report.

If you’re thinking you don’t or can’t relocate for work, the strongest hiring will come from leisure, closely followed by professional and business services – from lawyers to management consultants to advertising agencies.  Manpower said financial sector, mining and manufacturing also will experience strong hiring, and construction,  deeply in decline last year, will add jobs too.

Government was the only sector to show a negative employment outlet in the second quarter.

And the regions that are weak and struggling – and not good markets for jobless refugees –  Manpower points to San Juan, Puerto Rico and Merced, Calif., with a net negative 7 or 8 percent on the hiring prospects.  Other down areas include Las Vegas, Reno, Atlanta, Macon, GA; Portland and Champaign-Urbana.

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For updated, metro area unemployment, watch for a Bureau of Labor Statistics report tomorrow (March 10).

For more on the Manpower forecast, check out details here.

For another hiring forecast which has shown six months of gains, read the Conference Board’s report here.