Robert Parkinson - Managing Director
A quarterly survey of employment trends in over 30 key countries has found the percentage of organisations in China hiring professionals and managers has rebounded to 74% after a dramatic fall to 43% at the beginning of 2009. As a result job prospects for professionals and managers in China are now well ahead of the global average.
The ‘Global Snapshot’ from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 7397 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was up from 46% of respondents in April to 50% now. And the percentage of organisations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 44% to 48%. At the same time the percentage of organisations intending to shed staff had fallen from 35% in the spring to 25% now.
In China, where Antal currently has two offices, 49% of businesses expected to recruit in the coming quarter. Only 34% were in the process of reducing headcount and this was expected to drop to 28% over the next three months.
Elsewhere in Asia the employment situation was a variable one. In India 51% of businesses were currently recruiting, in Singapore 73% and in Pakistan 65%.
“After a substantial dip in hiring levels at the start of 2009, confidence seems to have returned to the Chinese job market in a dramatic fashion,” says who? of Antal India.
“We would be very brave, or possibly very foolhardy, to assert that the economic crisis that has assailed the world is over,” says Antal’s international CEO, Tony Goodwin, “but there is little doubt that the results of this edition of Global Snapshot give cause for some optimism. The hiring and firing of staff is one of the most effective measures of business confidence and there is no denying that, with a few exceptions, the jobs market for professionals and managers is improving all around the world.”
“Of course there may still be unforeseen troubles waiting around the corner – the W-shaped recession or the ‘dead cat bounce’, for example, so beloved by the more apocalyptic commentators. But what may save us even if they are lying in ambush is an underlying sense of confidence that appears to be returning for the first time in nearly two long and difficult years.”
Robert Parkinson
Managing Director
Antal International China
Tel: +86 10 6410 8866
Fax: +86 10 8440 0356
Email: RParkinson@antal.com.cn
Web: http://www.antal.com.cn
Suite 10E Block A, Gateway
No.18 Xiaguangli,
Chaoyang District
Beijing 100027, China
