Good news! Hong Kong employers back to hiring mode

Survey says, HK’s net hiring intentions rebounded by 5 percentage points to 35%.

Hudson’s 4Q hiring survey showed an overall rebound in net hiring expectations by 5pp q-q to 35% after falling 5pp in Q3. In line with light financial market activities, the banking and financial sector deteriorated and recorded a 6pp drop in hiring expectations. Apart from weakness in the financial sector, all other sectors saw a strong rebound in net hiring expectations.

Breaking down by sector, 4Q saw divergent performances by the financial and real economies. While net hiring expectations of banking and financial services firms continued to fall 6pp q-q to 20%, Manufacturing and Industrials rose the most by 17pp to 43%, followed by IT & Telecom (+11pp) and Consumer (+8pp).

According to Nomura Research, consistent with anecdotal feedback, financial institutions are still focusing on cost cutting by downsizing.

After a strong pick-up in 2Q 2012, net hiring expectations of the financial sector have fallen from 28% in 2Q12, to 26% in 3Q and to 20% in 4Q. Further, the sector recorded the highest intentions to decrease staff levels at 8% among all the sectors and the lowest interest to increase at 28% in the coming quarter.

Hudson commented that many financial institutions have adopted a “wait and see” approach, and are re-allocating
work among existing staff rather than invest in new hires.

In 4Q, as per the Hudson survey, all the non-financial sectors saw increasing hiring expectations for permanent roles from the last quarter, with the largest improvement noted for the Manufacturing and Industrial sector (+17pp), followed by IT & Telecom (+11pp) and Consumer (+8pp). IT & Telecom has the highest hiring expectations for both permanent and contracting roles at 51% and 48%, respectively, followed by Consumer (+48pp and +19pp), and Manufacturing & Industrial (+42pp and +17pp).