Want to know where the jobs are? Here’s the answer.

By Neil Patrick

Here's a CNBC clip that reveals some interesting details about where jobs growth is happening. Asia Pacific is reported to be where executive jobs are growing fastest, especially for those with experience of doing business in that region. Whilst the financial sector is still lagging even there, other sectors are very buoyant.


CLICK TO VIEW: Asia Jobs Outlook for Executives in 2013

None of this is particularly surprising given the economic growth in the region. However, looking below the surface of this report, there are some important implications for the rest of us.

Firstly, in the short term, this is bad news for Europe and the US as it is essentially a brain drain from West to East. Depending on your personal political standpoint, you may or may not believe that senior executives and their remuneration packages are part of the West’s economic problem. In fact I think this argument is largely irrelevant. As we see here, if Asian economies are attracting a significant number of senior Western leaders, this will have a debilitating short term impact on recovery prospects in the West. Intellectual capital is a key driver for businesses and people carry much of this capital value with them, largely unencumbered by legal controls.

But I think in the medium term, this trend will impact the West in a positive way. We know that wage inflation in China for example has been around 500% in the last 5-6 years. This has driven a massive rise in the costs of Chinese manufactured goods. This labour cost rise is coupled with increased fuel and transportation costs and neither of these costs is likely to lessen in the near future. This now means that for many Western businesses, domestic manufacture is now no more expensive than Chinese manufacture. Plus it allows greater control and shorter lead times, due to shorter transportation distances. These economic forces mean that there’s a distinct likelihood that there will be slow but steady rise in Western domestic manufacturing, eventually helping jobs recovery.

So the short-term effect is negative, but the medium term outlook is slowly improving. Not good news if you need to find work in the west over the next 5 years or so. Western economic recovery will be slower I think than with any previous recession.