|
Sammy
Ho
For
all the comforting talk of recovery in the second half of
2002, the reality is job cuts and salary cuts are still
on the rise. Our survey carried out earlier this month shows
that more than a third of the companies in Hong Kong surveyed
have either cut or frozen their salary in 2001. This has
been confirmed by the unemployment figure just released
that the unemployment rate has set another record high.
The average salary cut is around 16%, which includes the
common practice of canceling the year-end bonus pay-out
on top of cutting allowances and overtime.
Hardest
hits are still the "high-tech", IT and the retails sectors
where we are seeing an average of 20% salary cuts. We do
see some requirements on IT professionals but only on areas
like fund/Asset management houses, software house and credit
card related areas.
The
insurance sector, however, is showing a significant increase
in basic salary mainly due to the increasing demands of
experienced professional who worked in the banking/finance
sector. Positions like Financial planners, investment consultants
are widely available. Merchandising remains strong and there
are a lot of opportunities for those with more than 5 years
of experience.
For
the banking and finance sectors, many investment banks are
reducing graduate intake with an average of 15% reduction
on last year. The general demand of banking and finance
fell by around 65% when compared with last year, whilst
the demand for executive level positions fell only around
20%. Corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions have,
inevitably, been hard hit.
The
picture is not all gloom, We are seeing an up-tick in our
business we do see some strong pickup in the demand of senior
executives in several areas in March, in areas such as research,
asset management, private banking, fixed income and in particular
China related business areas. Some experts believe that
many companies went too far in laying people off. The retail-banking
sector is still very quiet and further job cuts are expected
as a result of the few mergers took place last year. There
is rumor that DBS Vickers is going to lay off substantial
personnel at the end of this month. |
