The New York City jobs picture, like the weather, is turning sunnier.

The numbers, though, certainly don’t indicate it, what with the most recently reported figures showing the city’s unemployment rate at 6.2%, well above the improving national jobless average of 5.2%.

However, one figure active in the city’s jobs-producing game is seeing a decidedly rosier tone in hirings, which, he thinks, should appreciably lead to better numbers on the city’s employment front. That’s what I get from Steve Klein, president of Choice Personnel, Incorporated, one of the Big Apple’s leading and oldest providers of both full and part-time personnel services, ranging from waiters for a dinner party to hedge fund managers.

“Employment is not going through the roof,” he said, “but it’s definitely better, with things picking up across the board.” The key reason, he added, is the improving economy, which, he notes, is not only creating more jobs, but also forcing employers to pay more. “The employer,” he said, “is no longer holding the trump card: The pendulum is definitely swinging in favor of the employee.”

Workers hired through Choice – between 750 and 1,000 a year – earn salaries ranging from $8 an hour to $250,000 a year for senior management. The bulk fall in the annual range of $40,000 to $100,000.

Mr. Klein, who, with his partner Harold Robbins (not the late author), started the company in 1974 with a combined capital of $3,000 and now generates annual revenues of more than $10 million, reckons hirings are up about 20% from a year ago. Further, he estimates, salaries are up 10% to 15% in the same period.

The firm finds most requests for new jobs in the city are in technology (notably workers involved with the computer infrastructure), Wall Street, finance, and accounting.

“Except for maybe retailing and the fashion industry, nothing is slow,” Mr. Klein said. “Wall Street,” he added, “is driving me crazy with its ups and downs, but it’s something we have to live with.”

He noted, though, that despite the busier hiring picture, “we’re still not back yet to 9/11,” after which, he pointed out, his firm’s business declined 40%, and half the staffing services in the country closed.

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HERE COMES THE BRIDE: Kleinfeld, the backbone of Brooklyn’s “Bridal Row” and the country’s largest retailer of wedding dresses and wedding gowns, is Big Apple-bound.

The 44-year-old bridal emporium, a leading player in the $75 billion-ayear wedding industry, is actively looking into prospective sites and hopes to be open for business in Manhattan in two to three years, Kleinfeld’s president and one of its owners, Mara Urshel, tells me.

By the same token, she made it clear that Kleinfeld’s planned foray into Manhattan won’t see any reduction in the contemplated expansion of its Brooklyn store, essentially a complex of seven connected townhouses, that generates an annual volume of more than $30 million. About 75% of the business is from bridal gowns (average price: $3,500); 10% from evening gowns, and the rest is accessories.

Interestingly, Kleinfeld’s entry into Manhattan will reunite two leading wedding-related merchants for the second time in the same borough. Last November, Michael C. Fina, the Big Apple’s leading name in bridal and gift registry – which opened 70 years ago on Fifth Avenue and 45th Street – added its name to Bridal Row by opening a one-level 1,800-square-foot branch in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section directly across the street from Kleinfeld.

Bridal Row is host to six wedding-related retailers, including a tuxedo store, a photography shop, a gift store and a florist, all located in a three-block radius on Bay Ridge’s Fifth Avenue. Including Michael C. Fina, which said its Brooklyn entry has been “very well received,” the six merchants, it’s estimated, should post 2005 sales of roughly $40 million.

Ms. Urshel, a former senior vice president of Saks Fifth Avenue, who, along with a group of investors, bought Kleinfeld in July 1999, said “we’ve enjoyed great success” and notes the store has shown consistent yearly growth since the purchase. “It’s a business marriage that has really worked well,” she added. She also said, “We get offers all the time from interested buyers, but we have no plans to sell.”

Interestingly, a Kleinfeld entry into Manhattan – which is already rife with competition in wedding-related apparel because of the huge markups – could lead to an immediate 5-15% reduction in the city’s wedding gown prices, a Saks Fifth Avenue manager tells me.

The average cost of a wedding gown in Manhattan runs between $2,500 and $3,500, versus the national average, according to Modern Bride Magazine, of $887. June, as you might have guessed is the busiest month of the year for weddings, accounting for 11% of all marriages.