Jun 12, 2013

Taiwan: World’s Strongest Hiring Outlook For Q3


For the third quarter, Taiwan has emerged on top of the hiring outlook list, ahead of other frontrunners, such as Brazil, Japan and China.

Below is an article published by Focus Taiwan:

Taiwan's hiring outlook for the third quarter appears to be the strongest in the world, according to a survey released Tuesday [11 June 2013].

In the survey, global workforce solution services provider ManpowerGroup said the net employment outlook in Taiwan for the third quarter hit 35 percent, up three percentage points from the second quarter after seasonal adjustments.

The net employment outlook is calculated by subtracting the percentage of employers anticipating a decline in total employment from the percentage expecting to see an increase.

Taiwan's net employment outlook was higher than the 28 percent seen in Brazil and the 24 percent in Panama, Peru and Turkey, the survey found.

On a regional basis, the third quarter employment outlook in Taiwan was ahead of New Zealand's 22 percent, India's 18 percent, Japan's 15 percent, Singapore's 14 percent and China's 13 percent.

Of the 1,065 employers in Taiwan questioned by the survey, 43 percent said they would increase their workforce in the third quarter, 3 percent said they would cut staff and 52 percent expected to keep the size of their workforces unchanged.

That meant Taiwan's net employment outlook for the third quarter was 40 percent before seasonal adjustments.

On a global basis, the survey covered almost 66,000 employers in 42 countries and regions, according to ManpowerGroup.

The survey said Taiwan's service sector had the strongest hiring prospects for the third quarter among the country's six major sectors, with a seasonally adjusted net employment outlook of 43 percent.

The mining and construction sector came in second at 41 percent, ahead of the transportation and utility sector (34 percent), the manufacturing sector (33 percent), the financial/insurance and real estate sector (32 percent), and the wholesale and retail sector (31 percent).

"Although employers across industries remain generally concerned with the worse-than-expected Q1 GDP, most of them are planning to recruit more staff with the approach of the graduation period that coincides with our peak hiring season," said Terence Liu, country manager of ManpowerGroup Taiwan, in a statement.

Following the lower-than-expected economic growth in the first quarter, Taiwan's government downgraded its forecast for 2013 gross domestic product growth to 2.4 percent, from a previous estimate of 3.59 percent.

In May, Taiwan's jobless rate fell 0.1 percentage points from the previous month to 4.07 percent, the lowest level since July 2008 when unemployment stood at 4.06 percent. But the seasonally adjusted figure remained little changed at 4.19 percent.