Thursday, October 20, 2011

Singapore, Hong Kong hiring expectations are down for late 2011



What will be the job trends in Singapore in 2012? Is it bright as it was in 2010 and early 2011? It is early to talk about 2011 now but according to Hudson recruitment agency, late 2011 is unfortunately not very bright. Hudson releases a report called “The Hudson Report : Employment and HR Trends” for several Asian countries including Singapore, Hong Kong and China. This report captures employers’ hiring expectations for permanent positions for the next three months.

They have just released their latest report for the period between October 2011 and December 2011. In Singapore, hiring expectations are falling in most sectors for the last quarter of 2011. The survey, which is conducted over 460 executives across different industries, shows that only 42% expect to increase their headcount in the last quarter of 2011. This number is a sharp decline from 56% just a quarter ago. The survey also shows that the percentage of the employers expecting to cut staff levels increased slightly from 5% to 6% quarter and quarter.

Lowest hiring expectations are in the banking and financial services industries where the percentage is 30%, which fell down from 49% from a quarter earlier. Percentage of employers expecting to cut jobs is also highest in this sector of Singapore by 13%. Since the global economy is deteriorating fast and banking and financial services are falling down even for the big boys, it is highly expected that in the coming months in Singapore, many international banks will try to cope with the market conditions by cutting jobs.
Only IT&T and Manufacturing & Industrial sectors have more than 50% of employers with expectations to hire more and these sectors also have the lower percentage of employers for expected job cuts.

“The majority of sectors also report a sharp fall in hiring expectations since the same quarter last year.  Overall, the 42% of respondents forecasting headcount growth this quarter compares with 58% in Q4 2010.  The proportion of respondents expecting to hire fewer staff has risen from 2% to 6%.  Expectations rose throughout 2010, when companies in all sectors were actively hiring as they recovered from the earlier economic downturn.”

Singapore still performs better than Hong Kong but worse than China in terms of hiring expectations for late 2011. Hong Kong employers expecting to hire more staff fell from 61% to 38% in just one quarter.

To access the full reports on Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore and China refer to The Hudson Report - Employment & Market Trends web site.

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