Page 502 - 2018 White Paper on the Business Environment in China

8 White Paper on the Business Environment in China

New Employment in 2017

Changes in Employment in 2017 As indicated above, few surveyed companies
increased efficiency through staff reduction
in 2017. According to this year’s finding, most re-
spondents had new hires in 2017. However, while the
number of respondents employing new hires dropped
by about 7% over the same period of last year, the
number of companies hiring over 500 new employees
also dropped slightly year-on-year. Based on this year’s
distribution of numbers hired and the chamber’s cur-
rent size of 2,300 members, we can estimate that over
the course of 2017 AmCham South China companies
hired approximately 537,000 new employees in China.

Although a majority of respondents claimed that
their number of employees increased either
significantly or slightly from 2016, about 20% of the
respondents experienced decreases. The new employ-
ment in 2017 and the changes of employment might,
therefore, suggest the Chinese economy is on a course
of recovery.

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