News on the economic front is rather gloomy these days.Every day, it is not good news at home or abroad. It has frequently been reported that many countries in Asia which depends on trade, is experiencing a contraction in its manufacturing sector. China has laid off 10 million workers due to the economic slowdown.The situation is also happening in the US, where a total 1.8 million jobs were lost in the last three months. It is also happening in Europe.
With the United States facing its worst jobs cuts since 1974, the fear is that a prolonged recession might begin to spill over into the services sector, which provides a major source of employment for a number of emerging economies.The Star, however, reported that there are still employment opportunities in the education, healthcare and oil and gas sectors
While companies prefer not to hire, opting to conserve cash during the downturn, the education and healthcare industries are still hiring people as are companies in the oil and gas industry despite the contraction in the mining sector over the past quarters. Manufacturing jobs would still continue to be reduced over the next one to two quarters but a silver lining might be the off shoring of jobs from North America and Europe to countries with cheaper labour costs. Malaysia may see an increase in outsourcing jobs from these countries.
Companies are retaining talent and retraining staff. In times of recession as had happened in the last financial crisis of 1997 -1998, the number of training companies grew overnight. It was lamented by the Member of Parliament for Pasir Salak that in the last recession, these companies reaped a lot of profits from the HRDF set up by the Ministry of Manpower Resources without really training the workers.
In the healthcare sector, things are not as gloomy as elsewhere.Even though the locals are now flocking to the government hospitals, private hospitals expect to receive the benefit of patients who previously seek treatment in developed countries to look for cheaper destinations like Malaysia.Even the local rich who usually went to Australia or Singapore would get treatment at local private hospitals.
