Hiring activity in Taiwan should gain force next quarter, as companies in tech, finance, real estate and other sectors intend to raise headcounts to meet demand as business picks up and to address personnel shortages, a survey by human resource advisory firm ManpowerGroup showed yesterday.
The survey found that 39 percent of the 630 local firms polled plan to add workers during the October-to-December period, 21 percent intend to reduce their workforce and 36 percent would stay put.
The employment outlook is the brightest in the financial and real-estate sectors, as local financial firms are experiencing a retirement surge and a high turnover rate among young bank staffers, said Lai Yi-wen (賴怡文), managing partner of the professional talent business at ManpowerGroup.
Photo: CNA
State-run lenders alone have announced more than 1,000 new job openings in wealth management, customer service, financial technology, information technology, cybersecurity, general finance, and environmental, social and governance (ESG), the survey showed.
At the same time, real-estate companies are looking for talent in property transactions, big data analysis, software development and other skills in the hope of drawing new graduates to the sector, ManpowerGroup said.
They are expanding staff to take advantage of a housing boom induced by the government’s introduction of favorable lending terms for first-home buyers, it said.
Ranking second in hiring intention is the energy and utilities sector, as state-run enterprises embark on large-scale recruitments to support stable operations and future development needs, it said.
The active recruitment would reverse previous efforts to encourage voluntary retirement and downsizing measures to save on costs and boost competitiveness, Lai said.
The policy shift stems from potential power shortages and rising demand from infrastructure projects and development of renewable energy sources and energy storage technologies, Lai said.
Hiring interest is also high at the information technology sector, as US tech giants pour money into the development of cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) applications, Lai said, adding that local supply-chain firms have been expanding their production capacity and workforce.
Many well-known electronics suppliers would create thousands of job opportunities, especially for research and development engineers in AI-related fields, she said.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS