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How Coronavirus will change the Global Jobs Market

6th May 2020

By Vahid Haghzare, Director Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment

One of the top IT recruitment agency Hong Kong SAR in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Japan, Singapore, and Dubai, SVA Recruitment is an IT and IT employment agency that provides jobs, executive search, and recruitment services.

The Coronavirus pandemic is still very new and the situation continues to evolve. Already, much of the workforce has switched to home-working, patterns of travel have changed and many parts of the world are entirely locked down, with strict measures that govern everything from social distancing to the circumstances under which we can leave home.

But how will this experience change the future world of work and employment? Trend analysts are already drawing conclusions and identifying ways in which Covid-19 will probably reshape the employment world more permanently. Certainly, the global economy looks to be impacted heavily in the short-term, with a likely recession, although many economists hope that it will be relatively short-lived, as pent-up supply and demand are set to have a positive effect.

Here are the industries in which we think jobs in Hong Kong will flourish post-COVID-19, and those which are likely to be hit hard by ongoing restrictions of the fallout from the lockdown.

The Covid-19 losers

Obvious and immediate losers include hotels, travel companies and airlines, large scale sporting and entertainment events, gyms, restaurants, spas, and hairdressers. In industries such as travel, the entire supply chain has been affected and the situation doesn't look set to resolve any time soon.

Retail has seen a dip, particularly in sectors where customers enjoy the lifestyle element of browsing and trying products in-store. Manufacturing is also likely to be hit hard, and real estate is likely to see a dip. Don't forget the oil industry either, with the recent bizarre situation which saw the price of oil plummet to negative figures.

The big winners

Expect to see plenty of jobs in Hong Kong that are based at e-commerce companies. A large number of businesses have found that they can migrate their services online and dispense with their bricks and mortar operations if need be. These include supermarket chains, tech firms, pharma companies, and healthcare providers, digital services such as image and media providers, online personal training, and so forth.

Home-schooling is also a new reality and restrictions on physical full-time schooling may be in place for some time. Online video games and digital content have seen a huge upswing in demand and this is likely to be an area that continues to grow.

Tech firms overall are likely to be a huge growth area. The Financial Times has noticed that firms in this space are hiring frantically as they seek to find the talent that they need to meet the new digital lifestyle boom. In California, according to the FT, there are nearly 16,000 tech jobs currently open. We are seeing this trend in Hong Kong and other Asian markets too, even in the face of plummeting world markets and mass redundancies in other industries which cannot migrate online.

Larger firms are also likely to maintain their operations successfully, thanks to their huge balance sheets and cash reserves. In fact, companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Google and Asian equivalents are seeing strong growth as people locked down at home seek to find entertainment and delivered services, groceries, and essential products.

For example, Amazon has been reported to be making thousands of dollars every second from the Coronavirus lockdown and is hiring hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers and delivery drivers to meet demand. These giants will also be well primed to take business from smaller business rivals, who simply cannot compete.

There is no doubt that the world's economy will be hugely affected by this outbreak. Those individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit, the right tech skills, flexibility and motivation may well be placed to weather the storm, however, and to take advantage of new growth sectors.

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Silicon Valley Associates is ideally positioned to support the continual demand from tech companies and IT Departments looking to hire in Hong Kong, Asia, and Worldwide. Please let us know if you would further advise on the above topic or your hiring needs