The Hindu Business Line : Asians to dominate global labour force: Study

BY 2010, nearly half the world's population over the age of 50 will be in Asia; 90 per cent of the world's scientists and engineers will be Asians working in Asia and half the world's labour force will be in India and China, according to the findings of a study by Manpower Inc, a global HR company.

The study, `Future World of Work', involved Manpower and Shell as the founding members, a consortium of three MNCs (Unilever, Zurich Financial and Herman Miller), the ILO and China State Ship Building Company.

The study aims to understand global trends in employment and work, which, in turn, will help companies make informed human resources and business decisions for the future.

Highlighting the findings of the study in Bangalore recently, Mr Goran Hultin, Chairman and CEO, Caden Corporation, SA, said some of the critical questions facing managers everywhere are impact of demographics and technology, globalisation and new skills training. "Hiring will be slow, but positive into Q4 2004, though certain skills are in very high demand," he said.

The study also addressed the issue of outsourcing, he said. According to the study, the claim that China was stealing all US manufacturing jobs was unsubstantiated. "Over the last few years, China has lost over 15 per cent or 16 million of its manufacturing jobs, while the US has lost around 11 per cent or two million jobs in the same period. The reason appears not to be the movement of manufacturing from country to the other but a result of an increase in technology and, subsequently, in productivity, which in fact has risen considerably in both countries," the study says.