APAC Labour Market Insights - March 2023

This commentary builds upon the State Of The Labour Market newsletter, with APAC-specific data and commentary on the global metrics that have been shared there.

Global output is predicted to decelerate in 2023, but recover in 2024. Our baseline forecast remains a mild recession in the U.S. and the UK, very modest but positive growth in continental Europe and LatAm, and solid growth in APAC and the MENA region. We expect inflation to fall back for most economies due to lower commodity prices, decelerating growth, and mitigated supply chain problems. Nevertheless, the speed and scale of this decline will differ from one economy to another, depending on the relative importance of supply and demand factors in pushing up inflation in 2021 and 2022.

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Hiring has slowed; job seekers are intensifying search efforts.

Although hiring across the globe has continued to slow down in recent months, job markets remain resilient. For APAC, comparing March 2023 to March 2022, hiring is down 35% in Australia, 40% in India, and 43% in Singapore. This trend can be attributed to a variety of factors, including increased economic uncertainty and shifting market conditions.?

Meanwhile, the ratio of job openings to applicants (our measure of Labour Market Tightness) is near pre-pandemic levels. In Australia, there are approximately 3 active job seekers competing for each job opening, while in Singapore, the labour market is showing slightly more slack, with 5 active applicants per job. India has considerably more slack, with 17 active applicants competing for each job opening. However, based on government statistics, unemployment rates are currently at the lowest level in 50 years, suggesting that individuals who are still employed are searching for alternative employment opportunities.?

As labour markets cool down, job seekers are intensifying their search efforts, realising that they may no longer have the luxury of taking their time. Globally across many countries, the average number of applications per applicant has substantially increased compared to the same month last year. In APAC, for March 2023, the average number of applications per applicant in Australia increased 22% year-on-year, in India it increased by 16%, and in Singapore it increased by 28%.?

Some industries continue to show year-over-year growth in job postings

Despite a cooling labour market, some industries continue to show growth in job postings for March 2023, compared to a year ago. Examples of these industries include:

• Australia: Oil, Gas and Mining (+75%); Government Administration (+42%); Hospitals and Healthcare (+36%); Education (+35%); Retail (+34%)
• India: Construction (+49%); Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage (+35%); Consumer Services (+32%); Professional Services (+19%); Financial Services (+11%)
• Singapore: Education (+112%); Accommodation and Food Services (+99%); Entertainment Providers (+43%)

Where are tech workers going?

During the pandemic, we saw industries such as tech experience a hiring boom. In this uncertain environment,?the technology, information, and media industry are navigating a year of transition, and we are seeing hiring return to pre-pandemic levels. Crucially, we also start to see tech workers transitioning to other sectors that continue to invest in digital transformation. For example, sectors such as professional services and finance are hiring tech talent to grow their digital capabilities.?

LinkedIn’s data shows us which sectors that workers from the tech sector are transiting into:?

• Australia: Professional Services (34%), Financial Services (11%), Manufacturing (8%)?
• India: Professional Services (54%), Financial Services (11%), Manufacturing (10%)?
• Singapore: Professional Services (47%), Financial Services (24%), Manufacturing (9%)?

Fastest-growing AI Skills in APAC

Skills (even for the same job) have changed by 27% in Australia, 30% in India and 36% in Singapore. These are all above the global average of 24%, and illustrate how much change is going on in APAC. Amidst this constantly changing world of work, today, some of the most significant changes and opportunities are being driven by artificial intelligence (AI). When we look across some of the key economies in APAC, we find that the fastest-growing AI-related skills in 2022 were:?

• Australia: Computer Vision (+31% Y/Y), Natural Language Processing (NLP) (+27% Y/Y), and PyTorch (+15% Y/Y).?
• India: Computer Vision (+27% Y/Y), Pandas (Software) (+26% Y/Y), Natural Language Processing (NLP) (+25% Y/Y)?
• Singapore: Natural Language Processing (NLP) (+52% Y/Y), Computer Vision (+47% Y/Y), PyTorch (+38% Y/Y)

The tech sector employs the largest share of AI talent, and this number has grown over the past few years.?

• Australia: 3.04% in 2022 (up from 0.55% in 2016)?
• India: 18.39% in 2022 (up from 3.63% in 2016)?
• Singapore: 11.19% (up from 1.51% in 2016)?

When we look at gender distribution within AI talent, we also see that women are under-represented. As of 2022, the female representation within AI Talent is 30% globally, up from 26% in 2016. Representation is similar in India (29% in 2022, up from 26% in 2016), and slightly better in Australia (31% in 2022, up from 28% in 2016) and Singapore (36% in 2022, up from 31% in 2016). While female representation is growing, at this rate it will take decades to close the gap to parity. More needs to be done in order to build and develop women in AI.

Methodology Details

• LinkedIn Hiring Rate (LHR) - This analysis looks at the year-over-year % change in hiring rate, which is a measure of hires in a given time period divided by LinkedIn membership. The graph shows the year-on-year change in the hiring rate. If the change is less than 0%, this means that hiring activity is lower than it was at the same time in the previous year, and vice versa.
• Labour Market Tightness (LMT) - This analysis looks at the ratio of job openings to jobseekers.
• Transitions into other industries - This data shows the top industry transitions out of industry as a share of all transitions from that industry. The period of analysis is March 2022 - March 2023.?
• AI Talent - A LinkedIn member is considered AI talent if they have explicitly added AI skills to their profile and/or they are occupied in an AI occupation. Details of methodology can be found here: https://oecd.ai/en/linkedin

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The insights presented in this newsletter were made possible thanks to the work of Pingyu He, Yao Huang, Murat Erer, and Akash Kaura, all of whom are members of LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team.