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Job markets improving around the world - Antal

Tuesday 2nd February 2010

By Mike Jones

A quarterly global survey of hiring and firing trends covering more than 6000 organisations in 30 countries has found job prospects for professionals and managers continuing to improve.

The "Global Snapshot" from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 6151 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the US whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level.
It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months.

Current hiring across the globe was up from 50% of respondents in the autumn to 53% now. And the percentage of organisations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 48% to 55%. On the downside the percentage of organisations intending to shed staff had also risen slightly from 25% in the autumn to 28% now. However the general consensus was that the figure would drop to 22% over the coming quarter.

In Western Europe, the highest current hiring levels among the larger economies were in the UK (59%), France (55%), and Germany (51%). However many of the smaller countries bettered their larger neighbours, namely Switzerland (64%), Austria (58%) and Luxembourg (58%).The lowest levels of hiring were in Malta at 31% and Spain at just 30%

In Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the highest recruiting levels in this region were in Russia (71%), the Czech Republic (57%), Romania (55%) and Poland (48%). Hungary’s well-documented economic problems meant that it had the lowest level of hiring in the region with only 28% of businesses questioned actively seeking new managers or professionals although this was an improvement on the autumn figure of just 26%.

Across the globe the sectors with the highest levels of recruitment at professional and managerial level were:

1 Pharmaceuticals
2 Manufacturing
3 Engineering
4 IT software
5 Banking

The lowest were education and shipbuilding.

Antal CEO Tony Goodwin said: "Although a few countries are still seeing a decline in the employment market, the global picture has definitely improved once again.

"As we said in September, we are most certainly not 'out of the woods' as yet and there may be more unpleasant economic surprises to come but it does seem as if organisations of all sizes are approaching 2010 with more confidence than would have seemed possible in the very dark days of January 2009.

"As a result we are already seeing the first clear signs of organisations thinking in terms of the 'war for talent' once more with more robust businesses making early moves to snap up the best people in their markets before general recovery becomes too apparent."

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Recruitment Today

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