Archives 2009

City job market recovering from financial crisis

THE city’s job market is recovering from the global economic downturn with the number of jobs created at the same level as before the crisis, the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau said yesterday.

The number of jobs available in the city’s human resources market exceeded 120,000 in August, almost the same as last October when the financial crisis began to affect the job market in Shanghai.

Of these, the number of new jobs reached 40,000. Though still 20.43 percent fewer new jobs were created compared with last year, the figure was much lower than February’s 72.9 percent rate of decline over the previous year.

“Since the economy is getting better in the city and the government has launched a series of jobs-boosting measures, the job market is stepping out of the downturn and getting better,” said Li Ying, of the department of promoting employment in the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.

However, the bureau didn’t release figures for the unemployment rate.

Shanghai reported a registered unemployment rate of 4.3 percent last year. Local authorities pledged to create 500,000 job positions this year, with an unemployment rate controlled at about 4.5 percent.

From January to August, the city created 466,800 new jobs, helped 11,370 business startups, and provided vocational training to 105,300 people after a series of job stimulus efforts was launched at the beginning of this year.

The stimulus packages featured preferential policies for business startups, vocational training and internship plans for fresh graduates.

Job seekers switch to online business

Wang Dengfeng works as an interior decorator, but he is never splattered with paint at the end of the day and he has not once hurt his back moving furniture.

Instead of decorating stores and homes in the three-dimensional world, the 31-year-old designs and beautifies shops in the virtual world, making them appealing to online shoppers.

The career earns him between 5,000 yuan ($735) and 10,000 yuan each month, an income considered handsome, even for white-collar workers in big cities.

Wang is among an increasing number of Chinese young people earning their living online.

According to a recent popular online post, there are at least 36 kinds of online jobs, including online hourly workers and online shop assistants.

It is not known how many people make their living in the online world. Many work online part-time.

One of the most successful online workers is Kuang Baoqiang, from Yangjiang, Guangdong province, who earned more than 100,000 yuan last year as a professional blogger.

Kuang started to write blogs about basketball on sina.com.cn in 2006.

He has posted some 1,200 blogs, and attracted more than 38 million visits so far.

His popularity earned him a contract last year from a domestic firm that makes sports products that wanted to advertise on his blog.

Vivian Lin, from Jiangsu province, failed to secure a satisfying job after she graduated from college in 2005. Last month, after being unemployed for six months, she opened an online shop “Lin club” in the hopes of following in the footsteps of such online success stories as Kuang and Wang.

“A satisfying job is not easy to find nowadays,” she said. “But shopping and web surfing happen to be my two hobbies, so I decided to give it a shot.”

The shop has not got off the ground yet, but she has high hopes.

“I have much more to learn before I can make real money through this job,” she said.

Experts believe online employment will become increasingly important for unemployed young people.

Chen Xinming, a professor with South China Normal University, said young people should be encouraged to explore the option. But Chen said more study of the growing sector is needed to make sure young online workers are not exploited.

Guest Comment: the state of recruitment in Hong Kong

During the first six months of 2009, Hong Kong was inundated with retrenchments, salary cuts and hiring freezes, but the third quarter saw optimistic signs of a recovering hiring market.

The number of bank positions available swelled by about 20 per cent in Q3, with most of these jobs in the front-office.

Mainland Chinese banks in Hong Kong, for example, are already aggressively seeking to increase headcount in their global markets divisions. They report a high demand for relationship managers, sales professionals and retail brand managers to meet their growing needs.

Such developments are largely due to China’s advocacy of a “two financial centres” model. Hong Kong’s free market economy, together with Shanghai’s broad integration of mainland business and legal traditions, create an environment which is both competitive and complementary and which will assist the future growth of a financial infrastructure in Greater China.

However, despite the general recruitment surge, many banks are only cautiously optimistic. Although the number of bank job opportunities has increased, employers have imposed stricter hiring requirements during the selection process. Most notably, the number of interview rounds each candidate now goes through has increased to at least four or five, up from two or three in 2008.

Meanwhile, candidates have more or less tempered their salary expectations. Many unemployed job seekers see the value in being more flexible in terms of their total compensation and benefits packages, and some are even willing to accept a lower salary than their previous position.

By contrast, those who are already employed still expect increments of 10 to 15 per cent before they will consider jumping ship. But the problem here is that employers – even those which have increased their hiring – may not necessarily be able to offer such salaries. And to make things even more difficult for hiring banks to woo exceptional professionals, many rival firms are equally determined to retain their talents.