Asia Pacific city employment growth slows in 2023, except in China

Employment growth is likely to slow across Asia Pacific cities in 2023, due to faltering effects of post Covid-19 recoveries and worse global macroeconomic conditions compared to 2022. The exception is Chinese cities. These will benefit from the country’s post Covid-19 reopening in 2023 and we expect their employment to grow robustly, spearheaded by the consumer services sector.

What you will learn:

• We forecast employment to grow at a healthy pace in most major Chinese cities compared to China as a whole in 2023. We think that in central and southern coastal cities, employment will grow the fastest, thanks to a rebound in consumer services jobs following the removal of Covid-19 related restrictions. Beijing’s employment growth is forecast to be a bit weaker since it has less scope for recovery, and weaker demographics.
• In general, we forecast employment growth will be slower if not negative in major advanced APAC cities in 2023. Weak global macroeconomic conditions and unfavourable demographics will put negative pressure on employment growth. In these conditions, we see total employment declining in Seoul and Taipei. In Australia, Sydney will likely have a weak year in terms of employment, while Melbourne should outperform Australia as whole.
• Conversely, we expect that major Indian cities will be among the fastest growing APAC cities in terms of employment in 2023. Consumer services should drive total employment across all cities, but we also predict some sectoral variation reflecting regional specialisations.