A quarterly survey of hiring and firing trends in over 30 key countries has found job prospects for professionals and managers in China better than the global average. The percentage of organisations here expecting to shed staff in the next three months is also substantially below the worldwide average.

The 'Global Snapshot' from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 4217 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was down from 54% of respondents at the beginning of the year to 47% now. However the percentage of organisations intending to hire in the coming quarter had actually risen from 43% to 44%.

In China 46% of businesses were currently recruiting but 50% expected to recruit in the coming quarter. 30% were in the process of reducing headcount but only 19% expected to do so over the next three months.

Elsewhere in Asia the employment situation was a variable one. In India 47% of businesses were currently recruiting, in the Philippines 49% and in Singapore 52%.

"After a substantial dip in hiring levels at the start of 2009, confidence seems to be returning, at least in part, to the Chinese jobs market with hiring levels up from 43% to 46% and organisations expecting to recruit at an even faster rate over the next few months," says Sally Li, who runs Antal's operations in China. "The percentage of organisations shedding staff at professional level has also dropped, from 32% in our last survey to 30% now."

"Whilst the percentage of organisations hiring in the 32 countries surveyed has gone down, it has not plummeted in the way that the economic statistics, many pundits and the ever-cheerful IMF might have led us to believe," says Antal's global CEO, Tony Goodwin. "At the same time the percentage of organisations expecting to hire managers or professionals in the coming quarter has actually risen, albeit by a very modest 1%. And the number of businesses expecting to shed middle to senior level staff has remained almost exactly the same. The period of panic and unilluminated gloom does finally seem to be behind us. Recovery may still be a good way off, but it could be that we are now better prepared to pave the way to it than we have been for quite some time."