Taiwanese companies plan to hire more staff in the fourth quarter of this year, but those in India and China are expected to slow hiring from three months ago, a report released yesterday by Manpower Group showed.
The latest quarterly survey of employers by Manpower showed that 40 percent of the 1,073 Taiwanese employers polled this quarter said they would increase their staff in the coming quarter and only 3 percent planned to reduce hiring.
Using the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based employment agency’s “net employment outlook” gauge — calculated by subtracting the number of employers planning to reduce staffing from the number planning to hire — Taiwan’s reading stood strong at 37 percent for the three months ending Dec. 31, unchanged from this quarter, but down 3 percentage points from a year ago.
“Taiwan’s employment prospects continue to remain stable as do other indicators,” Terence Liu (劉玿廷), country manager of Manpower Group Taiwan, said in an e-mailed statement, citing stable GDP growth and improved unemployment.
“Currently, there is less uncertainty in Taiwan’s business environment than in other parts of the world — an unemployment rate that continues to shrink and low interest rates which help to bolster both consumer demand and employer hiring confidence,” he said.
By industry, the quarterly report found Taiwanese employers in the mining and construction sectors the most optimistic. In contrast, employers in the wholesale and retail trade sectors have the weakest staffing demand because of the eurozone debt crisis and the slow recovery of the US economy, Liu said.
Job prospects in the fourth quarter will also see steady quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth in other Asia-Pacific economies such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.
However, more employers in China and India are cautious about hiring in the final three months, adding to concerns that slowing Western demand may cast uncertainty over their economies in the short term, the report said.
China, in particular, has seen job prospects fall for the fourth consecutive quarter, with the net employment outlook declining 3 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and 26 percentage points year-on-year to 20 percent in the final quarter. Manpower attributed the sharp fall to small businesses’ struggle to cope with increasing labor costs.
“The uncertainty of the external macro economy combined with the high inflation rate and rising cost of labor is likely influencing employer plans to add to their workforces, and therefore many employers are taking a wait-and-see approach before they add to their payrolls,” Danny Yuan (袁建華), managing director of Manpower Group China, said in a separate statement.
Manpower interviewed more than 65,000 employers in 41 countries and territories worldwide and found that net employment outlook for the fourth quarter had softened in 21 economies compared with the third quarter.
Employers in Brazil and Taiwan had the strongest hiring expectations, while those in Greece, Italy, Slovenia and Spain were the weakest, Manpower data showed.
“The spark of optimism seen in the global labor market last quarter did not take hold, as employers in the majority of countries we research are now throttling their hiring needs,” Manpower Group chairman and CEO Jeffrey Joerres said in the report.
“Companies across the world are now more agile and quick to adjust to macro threats and decreased demand in their own businesses, giving employers a hyperactive index finger when it comes to hitting the start/stop button on hiring,” Joerres said.
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