KPMG says businesses will continue to hire foreign workers
April 06 2009 by Bryan Palmer
A survey carried out by KPMG International has found that, despite the economic slowdown, businesses will continue to hire skilled workers from abroad.
The survey found that 85% of businesses internationally agree that better labour mobility gives them an improved talent pool from which to choose the right employees, with 73% claiming it allows them to find higher quality candidates for their vacancies.
KPMG concluded that each country has idiosyncratic trends when it comes to hiring foreign workers. Countries such as the UK, the US and Spain bring in workers from many different countries with no notable preference over where the workers come from. However, Asia Pacific countries tend to rely on workers from certain nations. For example, Japan takes large numbers of workers from Korea, Australia and Taiwan and China relies heavily on workers from Singapore and Hong Kong.
European countries have a slight tendency to hire workers from within Europe, but the largest group of foreign workers in the UK is Australians (12%) followed by the French and Indians (11% each). British people make up the largest number of foreigners working in the US, at 14%, with India (9%) and China and Germany (7% each) also making up large sections of the immigrant community.
KPMG says many of the businesses it questioned wanted fewer restriction on immigration to further enhance their employment choices. KPMG stated, “in the medium to long term our survey indicates that multinationals will still depend on a free movement of people from country to country. Many called for reductions in immigration restrictions to facilitate this movement, alongside tax incentives to attract business into new countries.”
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