Asia’s finance houses leading jobs market recovery
Financial institutions are leading a recovery in the Asian jobs
market as the region emerges from recession more forcefully than
expected, analysts say.
While overall unemployment is still rising a year after the collapse
of investment bank Lehman Brothers, economists say it is the finance
sector which is bucking the trend.
“I’d be as bullish as to say we are in a recovery,” said Mike Game,
the CEO of Hong Kong-based recruitment firm Hudson’s Asia operation.
“We have seen quite a marked turnaround in activity in China in
particular. We are also seeing strength in Singapore.”
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection on September 15,
2008, as it buckled under the weight of the collapse in US sub-prime
mortgages, in a scandal that became emblematic of the worldwide
financial crisis.
“What happened during the downturn was that a lot of firms couldn’t
be seen to not lay people off but a lot were reluctant to let people
go,” said Matthew Hoyle, founder of Matthew Hoyle Financial Markets, a
specialist headhunter for the banking and hedge fund industries, based
in Hong Kong. “Now those birds are coming home to roost and there has
been a complete reversal in the hiring market.
We are now seeing people who were laid off coming back and demanding
signing-on fees.” Hoyle said business had tripled since the height of
the downturn, adding:.”It wasn’t entirely unexpected but I couldn’t have
imagined in my wildest dreams it would be this intense.”
Official government statistics in Hong Kong back up Hoyle’s optimism.
Although the latest available finance sector employment figures show
a 0.6 percent drop in the first quarter of 2009 from the same period a
year earlier, they are up on the last quarter of 2008 by 0.4 percent —
equivalent to nearly 700 jobs. Analysts say the financial institutions
stopped hiring altogether in the final three months of last year, before
beginning to replace key positions at the start of this year and then
taking on staff to meet growing demand in the second quarter.
One trader of a blue chip financial institution in Hong Kong, who
asked not to be named, told AFP he had managed to find work with a new
firm after being made redundant in the downturn.
“Even though I’ve been in my new job for about three months, I had
two headhunters call up out of the blue in the last two days with
multiple roles for derivatives traders at bulge bracket US banks,” he
said.
“And a number of other jobs on the go are typically smaller banks and
brokerages, picking their moment to get into markets they had previously
missed the bus on and lift some modestly priced experience to set up new
operations.”
HSBC is recruiting more than 100 staff members in Hong Kong, The New
York Times reported at the start of September, while in mainland China
it plans to add 1,000 employees this year, and a similar number next
year.
AFP |