Looking for a job in 2018? Taiwan is your destination

Looking ahead to the beginning of 2018, it seems that employers in industries across the board are expecting to add jobs, with certain sectors more likely to hire than others.

The global economy will probably expand this year by 2.7%, the World Bank says. Assuming the growth lives on into 2018, a healthy share of the world’s employers plan to step up hiring in the first three months of the year, American recruiting firm ManpowerGroup found in surveys released last week.

Among 43 places around the world that ManpowerGroup surveyed, Taiwan came out with the highest percentage of employers who expect to hire people next quarter. The industrialized Western Pacific high-tech hardware hub beat everyone else's hiring intentions with a “net employment outlook” of plus 25%, according to a survey of 1,018 companies in Taiwan.

According to the employment agency, there are two reasons.Banking and insurance will cover 31% of Taiwanese firms with hiring plans for the first three months of next year, says Joan Yeh, dispatch general manager with ManpowerGroup in Taipei. A lot of the new staffers will help banks build up financial technology, or fintech, which in this instance means automation of existing services.

This sub-sector in Taiwan now faces a “talent shortage,” FinTechnews.com said in March this year.

Established banks and insurance firms will draw from among Taiwan’s numerous trained engineers – a complement to the longstanding tech industry – to install equipment such as artificial intelligence technology, Yeh says. Fintech startups will create other jobs, she says. But they are expected to lag established players.

Of the Taiwanese employers planning to hire people in the first quarter, 30% will come from the manufacturing sector, Yeh says. In Taiwan, manufacturing usually translates to high-tech, a $131 billion industry.

Taiwan had been tracking toward the 25% mark over much of 2017, Yeh says. Its net hiring outlooks as calculated by ManpowerGroup trends also paced Japan (24%) and India (22%).

Like Taiwanese companies, peers in Japan depend largely on exports. The World Bank figured its 2017 global growth forecast based on a “pickup in manufacturing and trade” among other factors. Growth in “advanced economies” should reach 1.9 percent this year, a boost to their trading partners,” it says.