Hiring outlook strongest in financial services sector in Q3: Poll

Taipei, June 13 (CNA) Taiwan's financial services sector showed the strongest hiring outlook for the third quarter due to demand for IT talent from financial institutions to improve operations, a ManpowerGroup survey has found.

After seasonal adjustments, Taiwan's overall net hiring outlook index for the July-September period was 17 percent, down from 29 percent in the previous quarter and down from 19 percent a year earlier, the human resources advisory company's survey found.

The ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey (MEOS), which reflects hiring confidence among employers, calculates the net hiring index by subtracting the percentage of employers anticipating a decline in the size of their workforce from the percentage expecting an increase.

In the survey, 34 percent of 690 employers polled said they expected to hire more people in the third quarter while 17 percent said they anticipated a decline in hiring and 47 percent said their hiring plans remain unchanged.

This translated into a third quarter net employment outlook index of 17 percent before seasonal adjustments, and it stayed at 17 percent after seasonal adjustments, according to ManpowerGroup.

Sandy Chang (張淑君), the manpower company's general manager, said in a statement that employers were more cautious about the hiring outlook in the third quarter amid uncertainties in the global economic and political environment and military conflicts in the Middle East.

For Taiwan's financial services sector (including insurance), the net hiring outlook for the third quarter was 42 percent, the highest among the 10 major industries in Taiwan, according to ManpowerGroup.

In addition to growing demand for IT talent, government-invested banks appeared keen to recruit a wide range of professionals, including analysts, foreign exchange and wealth management specialists and compliance experts.

But the sector's net hiring outlook for the July-September period was down 5 percentage points from the previous quarter, the survey showed.

The IT services sector was second with a net hiring outlook for the third quarter of 31 percent, up 5 percentage points from a quarter earlier.

ManpowerGroup said the increase came as AI applications expanded beyond cloud computing into edge computing, which increased demand for IT professionals.

Of the 11 Asia-Pacific economies in the ManpowerGroup survey, India had the highest net hiring outlook for the third quarter at 48 percent, ahead of China (33 percent) and Vietnam (28 percent).

Taiwan took 7th place among the 11 economies, while Hong Hong was at the bottom at minus 9 percent.

Among the 42 economies surveyed worldwide, ManpowerGroup said a total of 39 reported an expected increase in hiring in the third quarter, and only three -- Slovakia, Hong Kong and Romania -- indicated a cut in hiring, according to the survey.

Taiwan's score for the third quarter was slightly below the global average of 26 percent.