Hong Kong's overall staff turnover rate for the third quarter of this year fell to 4.23 percent, a first quarterly drop since 2003, according to a manpower statistics survey which was made public on Tuesday.

Conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, the quarterly survey aimed to track manpower movements in the city's labor market.

The survey told that the overall turnover rate for July to September was 0.13 percentage points lower than in the second quarter. This is the first time that such figure in the third quarter dive since 2003, showing that job seekers were taking a more cautious approach about job changing.

Overall average job vacancy rate recorded 3.77 percent, 0.13 percentage points lower than the second quarter. For new positions, the percentage of the net growth was 0.15 percent, 0.38 percentage point lower than the previous three months. Manufacturing sectors even recorded a negative growth of minus 1.88 percent.

As revealed by the survey, major business sectors including banking, financial service, retail, trading and insurance sectors had narrow growth in new jobs.

"As economic growth is predicted to slow in the fourth quarter of 2008 onwards, employers are now tending to be more prudent in creating new positions," said Lai Kam-tong, Executive Council Member of the institute when commenting on such findings.

Lai added that with unemployment rate going up, fewer jobs were available in the major businesses, and job losses were recorded in the manufacturing sector, this indicates that the financial crisis has already filtered through the local job market.

(Xinhua News Agency November 25, 2008)