Asia Land of Opportunity or Missed Opportunity - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Viewpoint careers advice blog

Asia Land of Opportunity or Missed Opportunity - Viewpoint - careers advice blog As Chinese New Year arrives, it’s topical to look at how the employment markets in China and across the rest of Asia feel as the world drags itself back into economic recovery. It is said that people born in the Year of the Horse are driven by performance and success and certainly Asia needs that if it is to continue its rapid development in the decades to come. I spent the first few weeks of this year on a business trip across several countries in the region and a couple of things struck me. Firstly, despite all the consternation that Western observers have about the short-term economic growth rates in China, Asia in general feels as though it’s picking up momentum, at least in the white collar employment market that I’m interested in. It may not be back to the heady days experienced in 2007, but it is definitely improving quickly and many of the leaders in organisations that I met said that their business was increasingly strong. That optimism is translating into an expectation from those companies that they will recruit and grow their business this year. Not only that, but the same positive news is coming out of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and China. Secondly however, there is an almost unanimous view that Asia is facing an increasingly acute lack of the skills that these businesses are looking for and that that shortage will directly lead to economic growth falling short of its true potential. I find it incredibly sad that so many businesses have struggled to survive through the most difficult downturn they have maybe ever encountered and then, when the good times return, they are hampered from capitalising on the upswing because the skills they need are not available. Equally unanimously, businesses do not believe that their respective governments fully appreciate this challenge and by and large are seen as doing little or nothing to help. One other aspect surprised me too. Many companies are now increasingly looking abroad to find the people they need. 70% of the businesses I talked to said they would hire an overseas candidate and that’s a big shift in attitude. Their ability to do so however is very dependent on where they are. Hong Kong and Singapore have relatively accommodating labour laws whereas China is just the opposite. Japan is also a market that I think may be storing up problems for the future. Abenomics seems to have woken this economic giant and I saw for myself the increased activity this is creating in the professional job market. However, the rapidly aging workforce means that there will be even less skilled people available for work just as the Japanese economy shows its first sign of life for 20 years. I don’t think the full scale of that problem has yet been digested. I’m a great fan of Asia and the region represents a place of exciting opportunity. However, to capture its full potential, governments need to look at how they should invest in better education to raise the quality and quantity of skills locally available to meet businesses’ needs. That will take time, so to address the short terms gaps already evident, they really need to look at their restrictive labour laws to allow businesses to access the people they need from overseas. Businesses are coming round to the benefits of skilled immigration; it’s time governments did too.