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Taiwan’s Foxconn to recruit 5,000 technicians at home

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s tech giant Foxconn will hire 5,000 technicians locally this year, many of them to work on factory robots to build its gadgets, officials said Monday, in a sign the firm is refocusing operations to its home island.

The announcement — one of the group’s largest talent recruitment drives in Taiwan in recent years — comes as the conglomerate is slowing new hiring at its sprawling factories in China.

Foxconn said the move was due to increasing automation of manufacturing and assembly lines in China, where rising labour costs have squeezed profit margins.

Some of the new employees are to work at a software complex in Kaohsiung, in Southern Taiwan, spokeswoman Laura Liu said, while others will staff a robot research unit in the centre of the island, and a development unit at the company’s headquarters outside Taipei.

Chairman Terry Gou told media that Foxconn — the world’s largest maker of computer components, which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia — plans to use one million robots to do “simple” manufacturing work by 2014.

Foxconn already has 10,000 robots for painting, welding and other assembly tasks.

The company employs the vast majority of its workers in China, where it employs more than one million people, roughly half of them based in its main facility in Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.

Foxconn has come under the spotlight in recent years over worker suicides, labour unrest and the use of underage interns at its Chinese plants.

It has taken steps such as raising salaries, improving working conditions and enforcing age restrictions to address concerns raised by an independent audit of conditions mandated by Apple.

50% of Women Job-hop for Staff Benefits

According to the results of a recent survey on Chinese working women, about 40 percent of interviewed women were unsatisfied with their latest salary adjustment and 50.7 percent said that they usually switch jobs because of job benefits.

The survey interviewed more than 1,700 employed people nationwide in February 2013, including more than 770 working women. Statistics show that 44 percent of the women interviewed had hoped for a salary increase of more than 20 percent, but only 7.1 percent achieved that goal.

In the wake of salary adjustment disappointments, 44.9 percent of women said they would look for new job opportunities, 22.8 percent would work harder and 18.9 percent would have a discussion with their bosses.

In addition, 7.1 percent would choose to keep silent about it, a higher percentage than men. This may be because women tend to be more careful about interpersonal workplace relationships than men.

Women of different ages also differed in their attitudes towards the salary adjustment gap, with more women born in the 1970s saying they would keep silent about it. Women born in the 1980s were more likely to work harder, but those born after 1985 were also more likely to change jobs immediately.

When it came to job-hopping, 59.9 percent of interviewed women said they planned to change jobs in the next three months, six months or one year.

For many women, having to balance work and family means that job benefits become increasingly important as they get older. For example, they are more likely to accept a lower salary in exchange for more vacation days.

Statistics also show that 69.6 percent of interviewed women would look at foreign companies first for job opportunities, 20.9 percent would prefer state-owned enterprises and less than 10 percent would choose private enterprises. In general, people believe that foreign companies offer better job benefits.

Experts have suggested that women also pay attention to industry prospects, developmental trends, company management and other factors that may affect their career development within a company.

Are you prepared for China’s white-hot job market?

China’s corporate job market has never been so attractive and yet so competitive.

Boosted by steady economic growth in the country and across the region, many multinational companies are starting or dramatically increasing their operations here. Despite health concerns arising from pollution and food safety issues, foreign nationals are still transferring into China. Meanwhile, better education and international company exposure have also made the local workforce much more competitive. This perfect storm now poses a tough question to job seekers in 2013: how do you stand out among this fierce international competition?

To those based outside China, this could be quite a surprising read. It is common knowledge that there are plenty of jobs across many industries in China. However, recent graduates might be shocked to learn that companies just aren’t interesting in education anymore: they are looking for real practical experiences. Below are some factors working against different types of job-hunters:

— The number of Chinese graduates with rich internship experiences is traditionally low compared to the West. Multinationals also find many local graduates not “international” enough for them, or their language and communication skills not up to standard.

— On the other hand, the sheer volume of Chinese graduates returning home with shiny diplomas from prestigious foreign universities has unfortunately diluted the value of, even created a slight distrust in, such degrees. State media have reported that nearly half of all Chinese returnees earn no higher than 5,000 yuan (HK$6,000) a month.

— Finally, foreigners job-hunting in China can be considered expensive and potentially unstable, merely looking for another two to three years of employment in China while maintaining their expat benefits. Companies are also looking to reduce the number of foreign senior managers and replace them with local professionals to localise their business, so the smaller number of roles open with this expat capacity is fiercely contested.

Recruitment companies themselves are actually an excellent barometer for the local recruitment market. These companies, such as Antal International where I work, tend to focus on hiring their own staff based around their clients’ needs. If we are to work with a client, it makes sense that the consultants would be familiar with that industry and company style. At the moment, we will hire local professionals with international experience, good English-language skills and with strong technical understanding of an industry. This is because the majority of positions clients ask us to assist with require those skills too.

When a job market is aggressive and competitive like China, it is more important to stand out from the crowd. Here are some ways job seekers can ensure that:

For a recent graduate, the best way to get into the largest firms is via internships. They offer very little risk to a company, and a young professional can get to know an industry by actively participating in company projects. Even if that training does not result in a full-time employment opportunity, other companies will be more impressed for future opportunities. Also the level of risk is diminished for companies with someone who has working experience.

For the more seasoned professional, it is incredibly important to research the market, to check – for example, on websites like LinkedIn or Zhaopin.com – which job titles are in demand in the industry, and what are the requirements of a job description. Gone are the days when a sales manager of a competitor company could simply walk into another role in the same industry and be hired.

As the market matures, more strategy and more prudence are required. Look at today’s job interviews – they are much longer and stricter than a few years back. A candidate has to stand out by using previous experiences of management, difficult situation resolution and tenure to look like a valuable addition to a team.

In short, China is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Competition is rife, but for a well prepared professional with patience, it is still the place to be for opportunity and excitement.

China issues new measures to boost employment

“China has slowed down its economic growth, but the employment goal has not been downgraded, which shows the Party and government’s determination to guarantee and improve people’s livelihood”, said Mo Rong, the director of Institute of International Labor and Social Security under Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS).

Mo said that thanks to the country’s positive employment policy, the employment target has been over fulfilled in the past few years. New records of employment rate were set Last year. But it does not mean that the employment plan in 2013 will be easily completed. Mo added that compared with the past five years, it is more difficult to achieve the employment goal in 2013 because the employment trend has changed this year.

Employment issue is the derivative demand of economy development. The increase rate of gross domestic product (GDP) decreased to 7.8 percent in 2012, and the increase rate of investment slumped last year.

Mo said the impact of investment decrease from last year will emerge this year. The government report in 2013 targets GDP increase rate of 7.5 percent extending last year’s situation, which will generate negative effects to increase new jobs by expanding scale of production. In addition to that, the complicated international economy situation and foreign trade pressure are adverse for the realization of the employment goal.

The government work report has presented some new methods to promote employment goals:

First, increase new jobs by stabilizing economy growth and adjusting economic structure. With a better performance of enterprises, stable economic growth and extended production scale, more jobs will be created. Meanwhile, structure adjustment will also increase working posts.
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Second, improve employability and entrepreneurial capabilities and encourage people to start businesses to motivate employment.

Third, promote the steady growth of urban and rural residents’income to fuel economic growth by strengthening consumption ability.

China to recruit women for deep-sea research

The Chinese National Center for deep-sea research decided to recruit female divers to explore the ocean depths. According to the director of the center, Liu Feng, women are more accurate may contribute a lot into the field of deep-sea research.

According to media reports, in 2013, China plans to increase the number of deep-diving manned submersibles. Therefore, the center has decided to train new marine researchers. To date, the study involves only two deep-sea scientists from China. Last year, they tested a deep-sea vehicle in the area of the Mariana Trench. The vehicle reached the depth of 7,015 meters.

Currently, the deep-sea research center of China develops the program and standards to select would-be researchers. For women, requirements will be softer than for men, who, among other things, will have to make light repairs aboard the submersibles.

According to previous standards, deep-sea research was available only for men over 35 years old, with higher technical education.

Sands China announces pay rise

Sands China Ltd yesterday announced it would increase the salaries of its employees by 5 percent starting next month.

Additionally, the company said it is paying a bonus on February 14 to its staff, as a result of the company’s strong financial performance in 2012.The gaming operator has over 25,000 employees.

Sands China is the second casino company in Macau to raise salaries this year, after SJM Holdings announced a salary increase of five to six percent for all of its employees last month.

China to reform income distribution mechanism

In a bid to address widening wealth gap, China has unveiled a major plan to reform its income distribution mechanism, proposing to tax the rich and state units more besides imposing caps on salaries of top managers while increasing lower staff pay.

The reform will focus on increasing residents’ income, narrowing income distribution disparity and regulate distribution order, a statement issued by the China’s Cabinet, which approved the 35-point blue print, said.

As per the reform plan, the government will work to double the average real income of urban and rural residents by 2020 from the 2010 level and facilitate the poor to enjoy faster income growth.

The reform also targets raising the proportion of residents’ income in the overall national income and spending more government funds on social security and employment. However the statement said: “deepening the income distribution reform is a systematic project that is arduous and complicated and concerns the reallocation of various interests. There is no way to accomplish it overnight”.

The income reform plan was approved as China saw its income gap between new rich and poor was yawning, even with its economy emerging as second-largest in the world.

The Gini coefficient, a rich-poor index, reached 0.474 in China in 2012, higher than the warning level of 0.4 set by the United Nations. The reform plan was announced as wealth gap was identified as major threat to the ruling Communist Party of China’s hold on power.

It came a month ahead of the one-in-a-decade power transfer under which new administration headed by CPC new leader Xi Jinping would take over power from next month replacing Hu Jintao.

The new guidelines offer directions on an extensive range of policy areas such as taxation, subsidies, salary system, financial regulation, household registration and social security.

The guidelines set a target of reducing the number of people living below the poverty line of 2,300 yuan ($366) in per capita annual net income at constant 2010 prices by around 80 million as of 2015. That will be a drastic fall from about 128 million in rural areas who were defined as poor in 2011. According to official estimates China has 150 million people under the poverty line.

Under the plan farmers will be guaranteed proceeds from transferring their contracted land plots and collect higher revenues from gains in the land value.

The plans aims at officials, state-owned enterprises (SOE) and wealthy individuals in its bid to strengthen regulation of the high-income group, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Rules that demand government officials report their income, real estate assets, investment and family members’ jobs will be implemented more strictly, the guidelines said.

SOEs must impose ceilings on payments to their senior management who are appointed by the state and make sure senior staff’s salary growth is slower than the average level for general employees, they said.

The percentage of profits that central SOEs have to hand in to the government will be increased by around 5 percentage points by 2015 from the current level and the added income will go to social security.

The guidelines also proposed keeping the staff scale of central and local governments from growing in the 2011-2015 period and rigorously controlling government spending on receptions, car purchases and driving as well as overseas tours.
To tax the rich more, the government will expand experimental property taxes gradually, collect consumption taxes on more high-end entertainment activities and luxury products, and study imposing inheritance taxes “at an appropriate time”.

In the meantime, foreign individuals will no longer be exempt from personal income taxes on stock dividends and bonuses they obtain from foreign-funded enterprises in China, according to the guidelines.

China Moves to Temper Growth

BEIJING—China set a growth target of around 7.5% for this year as it kicked off a meeting to finalize its leadership transition, reflecting how Beijing is turning away from breakneck growth based on exports in favor of a broader economy driven by spending at home.

China’s ambitions for more moderate growth come after decades of double-digit increases and are a centerpiece of new leaders’ plans to be detailed during the annual National People’s Congress, which began Tuesday.

“We should unswervingly take expanding domestic demand as our long-term strategy for domestic development,” said Premier Wen Jiabao, delivering his final report to the congress after 10 years at the helm. The key to that change, he said, is to “enhance people’s ability to consume.”

Beijing’s broader goal is to shift the economy away from reliance on investment and exports, with a stronger role for domestic consumption, as it kick starts painful reforms to rebalance the country’s economic model.

Underpinning that is an ambitious plan to raise household income and ensure more equal distribution of national wealth.

A stronger social safety net, which frees up money for households to spend, is an important part of the plan. The central government promised a substantial 27% increase in its health-care spending to $41.8 billion, and spending on employment and social welfare is also rising fast.

Mr. Wen also reiterated commitments to bring China’s 200 million-plus migrant workers into the urban social welfare system and provide stronger protections for farmers’ land rights, both seen as crucial to support higher household income and greater social equity.

On other economic matters, leaders reduced the inflation target to 3.5% from 4% in 2012, reflecting a goal of keeping expected price rises from accelerating too much. The fiscal deficit target was set at around 2% of GDP, up from 1.5% in 2012, as Beijing puts its relatively healthy balance sheet to work in support of growth.

In the days leading up to the legislative meeting, China’s government aggressively struck at once-again-surging housing prices, showing leaders’ determination not to let a property bubble push the economy off track or breed dissatisfaction with the government just as a new guard is taking over.

The growth target maintains the goal for stable growth set out last year and isn’t a forecast—China routinely exceeds its targets. Last year’s growth was 7.8%.

During the National People’s Congress, eyes are on the new leadership under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party chief to be named president during the meeting, to see whether it will go beyond rhetoric to make the difficult changes required to raise household income and boost consumption spending.

Details on the timeline and implementation of reforms remain vague. And crucial questions remain unanswered on how cash-strapped local governments will pay for changes. Some analysts expect a major Communist Party meeting in October to fill in the blanks.

A bubbly property sector has been a key feature of China’s unbalanced growth. Rising house prices drove overinvestment in real estate, and also crimped consumption by forcing households to scrimp and save to get their foot on the housing ladder. Leaders have worried about social frictions caused by housing that is out of reach for average earners.

The renewed controls to tame the property sector, a major contributor to growth, suggest the government is prepared to safeguard the gains from three years of attempts to make buying a home more affordable for the middle class—even if it dents the growth outlook.

The realization that leaders are retightening screws surprised markets, which like many property buyers had concluded that leaders were satisfied with the results of repeated tightening and willing to tolerate a gradual return to rising prices and sales.

Shares of Chinese developers plummeted on Monday, the first day of trading after policy makers said on Friday that they would strictly enforce a capital-gains tax of 20% on profits from home sales. China’s State Council, or cabinet, also said it would reinforce controls on who is allowed to buy a home and push banks to raise down-payment and mortgage rates for second-home buyers in some cities.

The repeated tightening had resulted in prices leveling out. But in the past few months, house prices in China’s top-tier cities have again started to rise at alarming rates. Average prices for property in Shanghai were up 41% from a year earlier in the first two months of the year, and Beijing prices are also rising fast, according to data from real-estate agency Soufun.

“The government has not been able to break the cycle of expectations pushing prices higher and driving higher expectations. Someone has to get hurt, to convince people China’s property is not a surefire bet,” said Mark Williams, China economist at Capital Economics.

Shenzhen-listed China Vanke Co., 000002.SZ +0.46% China’s largest developer by volume was one of several property stocks to plunge the daily 10% trading limit Monday. The property hit helped drag China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index down 3.7% for the day. Mainland developers in Hong Kong also fell sharply.

The market appeared to regain its footing in early trading Tuesday, with the Shanghai and Hong Kong markets opening fractionally up.

The recent uptick in property prices had raised questions about whether policy makers can deliver a more permanent solution to the problems of the housing market. Reaction to the latest moves in Shanghai was that they were likely to have a strong effect.

“Home prices will definitely take a hit once the new regulations are in place,” said Chen Jun, a real-estate agent at Haiyu Dichan, a property agency in Shanghai.

Developers also took the move as a sign of the central government’s determination to tighten the market. It “strengthens our view on the long-term nature of the property curbs,” said a spokesman for China Vanke.

The measures to quell housing costs since April 2010 have left China’s central government in a game of whack-a-mole with real-estate developers, local governments and speculators—all of whom have an interest in continued rapid increases in prices.

Leaders’ efforts started to bring house prices back into line with income but did little to address the fundamental causes of China’s property bubble, analysts say. Limited alternative investment options for households, local government reliance on land sales as a source of finance and the persistent belief that China’s house prices can only go up meant the pressure for unsustainable rises in prices remains.

The latest moves appear aimed at preventing sharp increases in home prices spreading from China’s first-tier cities to provincial capitals and smaller cities, where prices remain subdued. “The evidence is that prices in second-tier cities follow the top tier with a lag of a few months,” said Jinsong Du, China real estate analyst at Credit Suisse. “The government wants to get ahead of that.”

Property developers face the prospect of slower sales. Yuzhou Properties Co., 1628.HK -1.01% a developer in the southeastern city of Xiamen, said the new rules would delay the launch of their high-end homes. “We have to wait for an opportune time to launch the villas,” said Leo Yang, investor-relations manager. “You can’t possibly launch it when the country is going through a tightening phase.”

The State Council has promised to expand China’s nascent property tax, currently being tried in Shanghai and Chongqing. A nationwide tax would dent the enthusiasm of speculators by increasing the cost of holding property. But finding adequate new sources of revenue for local governments, and alternative investment options for households, remain intractable problems.

Many analysts expected rising property sales and investment—the biggest single source of China’s domestic demand—to provide a tailwind to growth into 2013. But a weaker property market will hit demand for everything from steel to furniture to a car to park in the garage. Commodity exporters like Australia and Brazil, which feed China’s steel mills, could also suffer.

Real-estate developers come into the downturn with their balance sheets relatively robust. “The listed developers had strong sales in 2012 and also raised debt in the bond market,” said Mr. Du, the Credit Suisse analyst. “They are saying that local governments will go bankrupt before they do.”

Seeking New Employees, Foxconn Goes Deeper Into China

The Chinese Apple manufacturer is finding it hard to find enough staff.

New reports suggest that Foxconn, the Chinese tech manufacturer that’s perhaps the most famous member of Apple’s Eastern supply chain, is having a tough time finding enough workers for its many plants. Now Foxconn is opening plants deeper in China in an effort to find more staff. Despite the widely publicized plan to implement a million robots on its production line, it now seems that Foxconn’s expansion plans are placing it in a tricky recruitment position. The company has doubled its workforce over the last two years to over 1.2 million souls, and has been said to be planning expansion into the U.S., and recently revealed it has big plans to expand into Taiwan.

Recently a report that Foxconn had temporarily frozen hiring, allegedly due to weak iPhone sales, hit Apple’s share price. Since then it’s been argued that Foxconn, a firm that has a very dynamic recruitment cycle, was merely reacting to a glut of employees returning to work after the Chinese New Year.

Salary gaps between top cities narrowing

The salary gap between China’s first- and second-tier cities will narrow this year as the nation speeds its urbanization process, human resource experts said on Thursday.

China’s single-digit economic growth is unlikely to impact recruitment in 2013, and job applicants with better knowledge of local markets will find it easier to get employment, said a survey released by Robert Walters Plc, a United Kingdom-based recruitment consultancy.

Overall salary levels in China will be “slightly higher” than in 2012, with candidates moving jobs usually able to get a 15 to 25 percent pay increase, according to the survey. Those who stay put will get rises of around 8 percent, which corresponds with the World Bank’s estimate in January that China’s 2013 GDP growth could reach 8.4 percent.

“As more international players enter lower-tier cities, talent was also lured away from metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai. The trend will help narrow salary differences among Chinese cities,” said Arthur Wang, managing director of Robert Walters China.

He added that while there was a salary gap of 40 percent between people doing the same jobs in Shanghai and Suzhou two years ago, the current pay differential is between 15 and 20 percent.

However, there was a drop in demand for candidates with Western backgrounds, despite the nation’s increased globalization.

People from other Asian economies, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia were preferred in the Chinese mainland due to their ability to communicate in Mandarin and adapt to Chinese culture, said the survey.

“Global conglomerates are desperate to turn China into a solid profit generator, but, in order to achieve this, they need employees who are familiar with the mainland market,” explained Wang.

Although many international brands have scaled back their expansion plans in China, a number of players still intend to enter smaller cities in the country, boosting recruitment in their sales, human resource, training and business development departments, said Robert Walters.

Demand for new employees in the retail and luxury sectors may grow by up to 20 percent year-on-year until 2015, and salaries in these sectors may rise annually by 15 to 25 percent, said Wang.

In addition, the banking and financial service sectors will also see strong demand for new employees this year, said Wang.

Although the sectors were the hardest hit during the global economic crisis, a number of companies have already started to announce expansion plans in the first two months of this year.

“Many overseas financial firms delayed their expansion plans last year, which is set to trigger bigger recruitment initiative as the economy stabilizes,” said Wang, adding wage increases could hit more than 20 percent for high quality employees.