In poor business climate, most firms see no need to hire

Only one in four Hong Kong companies expect to take on staff in the final quarter of the year because most anticipate only an 'average' business performance.

Recruitment agency TMP Worldwide found in a survey that two-thirds of employers plan to keep their staff levels steady while a quarter plan to hire and eight per cent intend to cut staff. By contrast, more than half of companies in China expect to hire in the fourth quarter because they expect strong growth, highlighting the migration of investment from other Asian countries to the mainland.

Rohit Ambekar, a divisional manager at TMP, said: 'There's economic uncertainty. Nobody's ready to increase hiring right now. There's no new investment going into growth. It's all going to China instead.'

However, he added: 'In the previous two quarters, there was a lot of insecurity about whether there would be restructuring, retrenchments. That seems to have gone now.'

Of the 2,300 employers TMP surveyed in six countries, 1,000 are in China and Hong Kong while the rest are in Japan, Korea, Singapore and Thailand.

About 70 per cent of companies surveyed were multinationals and 30 per cent local firms. They were asked about hiring and salary expectations for middle managers.

Of the Hong Kong companies that do plan on changing staff levels, those selling consumer and retail goods are most likely to hire, with 27.7 per cent saying they planned to do so. Telecommunications firms are most likely to fire staff, with 15 per cent saying they would.