The spine-chilling events of the past 12 months have understandably caused economists and employment agencies to hedge their every public utterance with qualifiers, conditionals and carefully chosen disclaimers.
So when recruitment firms talk of cautious optimism and their own need to hire staff, and HSBC boldly announces that growth has "roared back" with domestic demand "firing on all cylinders" in Asia, it seems reasonable to start believing that the tide really has turned.
Genuine recovery is never simply a matter of achieving an uptick in GDP or better-than-average gains against a few market indices. What concerns employers and job seekers is the "real economy", such as forward factory orders, actual retail spending, hiring prospects and salaries. But there are encouraging signs of revival.
Anecdotal evidence points to companies ending headcount freezes and restoring staff from part- to full-time roles to meet increasing demand. Candidates are once again looking for moves, not just hoping to sit tight. Travel industry figures confirm a jump in outbound and inbound tourists since August. And, most reassuring of all, the number of new jobs on offer locally appears to be on a steady upward trend.
The SCMP/admanGo recruitment report, which tracks total jobs advertised in publications in Hong Kong, recorded 28,410 openings for the third quarter of 2009, a 17 per cent improvement from the 24,094 logged during the previous three-month period. Focusing just on the comparative performance for this year's second and third quarters, certain sectors clearly led the way.
Banking and finance jobs climbed from 1,290 to 1,530; hotel and catering positions leapt from 1,201 to 1,889 and retail plus wholesale surged from 975 to 1,516 new openings.
Auguring well for the general health of the broader economy there were also marked increases in education and training - up from 2,734 to 2,936 over the respective quarters - and personnel agencies, which went from 317 to 413 available positions.
Putting this in a wider context, Frederic Neumann, senior Asia economist for HSBC, noted the bank had recently raised its 2010 growth estimate for Hong Kong to 3.8 per cent from 2.4 per cent.
In his view there might still be lingering apprehension about hiring and investment in many corporate boardrooms, but labour market improvements would continue even if the overall rate of recovery lagged other regional economies of China and South Korea.
"The primary driver this time around will be recovery in financial markets lifting higher consumption," Neumann said.
"We have to wait for that to feed through, but the Hong Kong economy is very flexible. We will see growth rebound first and an impact on the labour market. And by the second half of 2010 [things] should be doing rather well."
Assuming that occurred, the local unemployment rate should fall back to between 3 and 4 per cent. The government's pump-priming measures and large-scale construction projects would bring relatively few new jobs. However, benefits would derive from the "multiplier effect" as the infusion of money spent on construction begins to trickle through the economy, creating demand for suppliers and, ultimately, new jobs in the retail and service sectors. In due course these developments should also boost traffic through the port and airport, along with logistics services dependent on those hubs.
"Also keep an eye on entertainment and the arts," Neumann said. "It is tied to income and tourists coming in, but could be another fairly robust area."
Based on recent indications, Mark Carriban, Hudson's managing director for Asia, said he was now cautiously optimistic. The firm's in-house research showed that hiring expectations among employers had continued to rise since the end of the second quarter. While some "rightsizing" was still going on there were fewer reported intentions to cut staff, giving reason to believe that recovery was genuinely taking hold.
"I am slightly more confident that it is sustainable but, remember, the improvement is from significant lows," Carriban said. "There will still be contraction this year, and Hong Kong still has an export-dependent, banking-centred economy. We should see pick-up in 2010, but not at a hugely dramatic rate." He observed that recruitment in the banking and finance sector was showing clear signs of life, although growth in hiring was uneven. Specifically, demand was up for back- and middle-office roles and in risk and compliance, but frontline and corporate banking positions remained weak.
Elsewhere, though, the positives were mounting. Companies were reactivating IT projects and investment; HR managers were planning programmes for staff retention and senior-level hiring; and organisations, including Hudson, were returning to full-time duties staff previously on extended leave or a shortened week.
"We are now in a position to restore people on part-time work to where they were, and a lot of sectors are now seeing it is time to do this," Carriban said. "It is an indication of confidence that things are getting better, but are not explosive." In this climate, tourism obviously serves as another key indicator of perceived job security, spending power and general sentiment.
Noting this, Joseph Tung Yiu-chung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, advised that, after a first half hit by swine flu and the recession, outbound and inbound tours had picked up "quite substantially".
Gauged by sales turnover, outbound bookings for August 2009 were up 30 per cent compared with the corresponding month in 2008 and September was 17 per cent better by the same measure.
"We see a recovery there and the whole situation for the travel industry is quite promising," Tung said. "The inbound is also slowly recovering, especially from the mainland market, in these few months and quite a number of companies are increasing their manpower."
He anticipated a continuing need for tour escorts, ticketing agents, office managers and accounting staff. The SCMP/admanGo report reflected this, showing that advertisements placed for travel-related jobs rose from 190 to 230 over the second and third quarters.
Referring to her company's employment outlook survey, Lancy Chui, Manpower's general manager for Hong Kong and Macau, said local firms' hiring intentions had strengthened slightly moving into the fourth quarter. Of 815 employers contacted, 11 per cent had forecast a need to increase headcounts in the next three months, compared with 8per cent for the third quarter. As such, the overall market was still best described as employer-driven rather than candidate-orientated.
"For permanent positions, we are now seeing companies resume hiring activities or [relax] headcount freeze, particularly in the retail and FMCG [fast-moving consumers goods] sectors," Chui said.
From her perspective demand was keenest in professional and business services, IT, engineering, education and health care. And despite the downturn some Hong Kong employers were still struggling to fill available positions for sales representatives. Confirming that, the SMCP/admanGo report recorded 2,645 sales/business development openings in the third quarter of this year, well ahead of the 2,272 in the second.
For Anthony Thompson, managing director for Hong Kong and Southern China for Michael Page International, a noticeable change was that companies were now ready to make hiring decisions and good candidates were once again looking to move for career progression.
"We are seeing a continued increase in positive sentiment and activity levels are much higher," he said, cautioning that talk of a full-blown recovery was probably premature.
The crucial point was that new jobs were being created, not just replacement positions, in the finance sector, and in the broad range of product and service industries.
Candidates prepared to move were looking for salary increases of perhaps 10 to 15 per cent and, for those with relevant qualification and experience the mainland could offer potentially vast opportunities.
