Asia faces shortage of workers who can fill growing number of tech roles, says job portal operator
Asia may be struggling with a shortage of workers after the pandemic, but Peter Bithos, CEO of job portal operator Seek Asia, said it is not the same as North America’s “Great Resignation.”
Instead, Asia’s workforce has a shortfall of people who possess the skills to fill tech roles in companies, Bithos told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
“What we’ve been seeing is a large reconfiguration of the types of talent needed” in the workforce, he said. This is reflected in the increase of tech role listings on Seek’s platforms, which is up 66% year on year in Singapore and 29% in Asia, according to Bithos.
Despite layoffs at tech companies, almost “every sector in the economy outside of tech” is hiring for tech workers, Bithos explained. Tech jobs across Asia remain robust and are “very high in demand,” he added.
A search on job portals JobsDB and JobStreet, which are operated by Seek Asia, showed 57,902 jobs available under the information technology category across six Asian economies: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.
Applicants for those tech roles are up 14%, which Bithos said could be driven by tech sector layoffs as well as people feeling “confident” enough to seek employment as the pandemic comes to an end.
Laid off workers still have many jobs available to them, although those roles may not be at a “pure tech” company, Bithos said.
Technological jobs make up almost half of the fastest-growing job titles in Singapore over the past five years, LinkedIn said in its 2023 “Jobs on the Rise” list. These include jobs such as cybersecurity engineer, back-end developer and artificial intelligence engineer.
