Hiring stabilises at UAE companies - survey

Job prospects in the UAE are still below the global average but the employment market is showing signs of stabilising, a new survey said on Wednesday.

A quarterly survey of employment trends in more than 30 countries has revealed the percentage of organisations in the UAE hiring professionals and managers has steadied at 46 percent.

This followed a large decline in April which saw the hiring rate drop from 56 percent at the beginning of the year to 47 percent, the survey by international recruitment firm Antal added.

The poll asked 7,397 companies in major markets whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level.

It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months.

Current hiring across the globe was up from 46 percent of respondents in April to 50 percent in August.

In the UAE 49 percent of businesses expected to recruit in the coming quarter while only 30 percent were in the process of reducing headcount and this was expected to drop to 22 percent over the next three months, the survey added.

Elsewhere in the region the employment situation was a varied with 51 percent of businesses in Saudi Arabia hiring staff.

"After a substantial dip in hiring levels in April, confidence now seems to be returning to the UAE job market," said an Antal Gulf office spokesman.

"We would be very brave, or possibly very foolhardy, to assert that the economic crisis that has assailed the world is over," added Antal's international CEO, Tony Goodwin.

"But there is little doubt that the results of this edition of Global Snapshot give cause for some optimism."

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