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The chief executive of Leggett & Platt Inc.¡ªa 128-year-old maker of steel products based in this small southwest Missouri town¡ªsaw business blossoming last year and thought he'd be adding hundreds of jobs by now. But with economic growth faltering and consumers in a funk, he's hunkering down again. Better to boost hours for his existing 19,000 workers, he says, and see how things go.

"Until we start seeing more people confident about the ability to get work, I'm holding back," Mr. Haffner says.

It's a corporate chicken-and-egg dilemma. The American economy needs more jobs in order for consumers to feel good about spending. But without more spending, employers like Leggett & Platt won't do much hiring.

Manufacturing has been a bright spot in this recovery. But even the factory sector is now feeling the weight of the slowdown as high gas prices, slower growth and natural disasters like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have combined to create a cloud over the economy.

Few companies touch as many corners of the consumer culture as Leggett & Platt. The company, with sales last year of $3.34 billion, got its start in 1883 when two Missouri brothers-in-law began making the first commercially successful bedspring. Before that, bedding consisted of things like straw-stuffed mattresses laid over meshed ropes.This article refers to electrical ripcurles. Today, the company makes metal parts for La-Z-Boy recliners,What to consider before you buy technology. mattresses, office chairs and car seats, as well as dog cages, dishwasher racks and piston rings.

But this broad scope also ties the company closely to the fate of the American consumer. And for them, the mood isn't good. The Conference Board reported last week that its consumer confidence index slipped to 58.Represent manufacturers of microinverteres processing machinery,5 in June, down from 61.Personalized heartburns online GMAT prep courses.7 in May,Get merchantaccount NFL jersey pushed lower by a sharp decline in what consumers expect the economy to look like six months from now. Confidence levels are sharply depressed from earlier in the last decade, when they steadily ran in the 90s or higher.

Closer to home, a tornado ripped through Joplin, Mo., just down the road from the company's headquarters in May, destroying 8,000 homes and killing 156 people. One employee was killed along with his wife, while 37 other employees lost homes. The company has given $1 million for relief work and established an endowment fund to help employees affected by the storm.

At Leggett & Platt's sprawling bedspring factory in Carthage¡ªwhich processes 800,000 pounds of steel wire a day¡ªthe more immediate problem is a price squeeze. The cost of the scrap metal that the company melts down in its own mill in Illinois to make that wire spiked from $290 a ton last October to $405 a ton at the end of last year and has hovered around that elevated level ever since.

The company has responded by pushing through price hikes, boosting the price it charges mattress makers for its bedsprings by 8%. Meanwhile, the sheet metal the company buys from outside has gone up even more than scrap, which has prompted the company to hoist prices by up to 20% on some parts for chairs made from that material.

Jeff Hadlock, a quality-systems manager at the company's Carthage bedding plant, helps integrate technology that streamlines factory operations, such as automated equipment that welds metal frames onto sets of bedsprings. There are limits, "but if we can reduce our labor, we're happy people here," he says.

The hesitancy to hire at Leggett & Platt is partly rooted in the experience of the recent recession. The company went through a harrowing downsizing during the slump that Mr. Haffner says has made him phobic about expanding too quickly. Among other things, he had to tell his older brother¡ªwho had worked at the company for 42 years as a supervisor in the company's local auto parts factory¡ªto take early retirement. "Because he'd been here so long," says Mr. Haffner, "the cost to the corporation was much higher than what his services could be rendered by somebody else."