IT Workers, Rejoice

Dotcom may be going bust and hi-tech companies heading for a slowdown in the United States, but times are still good for information0technology workers in Asia. Many Companies remain desperate to hire qualified tech terms and will pay well keep them.
That’s according to results of a Salary Increase Survey released on January 10 by global human-resource consultant Hewitt associates.

The survey, the largest of its kind in Asia, covered 11countries, 13 industries and five job categories ranging from top management to clerical support and manual workers. Its found that last year companies in the region gave pay rises averaging 8.4%, with India leading at 15% and Japan at the low end with 3%. And this year won’t see much of a slowdown. Certainly not in the tech industry. Most companies predict that even with the U.S. economy cooling down, they will pay out even bigger in 2001.
“Dotcom are tiny, tiny part of the economy”, Say Frank Johnson, Hewitt’s Shanghai –based head of measurement in the region, who conducted the survey. “There is still a tremendous ongoing need throughout the region for hi-tech talent. And there’s just no enough of them to go around.”
Johnson says that these double-digit increases are new for the region. Before the tech boom, most Asian economies say only incremental salary increases, mostly triggered by inflation or other macroeconomic factors. But us more Asian shun lifetime employment, companies are being forced to pay more recruit and retain qualified workers. In China, for instance, even with two years of deflation, wages have gone up over 10% since 1999. “This reflects an extreme scarcity of talent in some fields rather than China’s Underlying economics,” says Johnson.
In China and across most of Asia, talent is particularly scarce in the field of information technology and hi-tech marketing and sales. According to another survey conducted by Hewitt last year, the “Hot Skills” that employer most want throughout the region are in Web design, Web infrastructure, Web security, and electronic data interchange. The most intensive battle is for Internet-related talent.
(By Suh-Kyung Yoon, in www.feer.com Jan 25 2001, page 70)
Re-publish by. www.tradinginfoceo.blogspot.com , March 3, 2008