Australia, the Philippines and Hong Kong earned special mentions, as did remote-working roles for software engineering, quality assurance and product management

Based on data gleaned from its 260,000 worker contracts across 160 countries and also from third-party data sources, an HR automation platform has announced that, from January through December 2022, global hiring had grown across all regions, with the Asia Pacific region taking the lead.

Also, 89% of the contracts for that period processed by the firm were for remote roles.

For its APAC global hiring data, Deel observed that Australia came up tops in in terms of organizations’ rate of hiring, followed by Hong Kong and then India. Globally, the top three sources of global hiring were Sweden, Australia, and Estonia, with Hong Kong coming in at number six and mostly involving the hiring of remote workers from Ukraine, India, the Philippines, the US and the UK.

Casting a spotlight on Hong Kong, the firm noted the Chinese city’s talents were sought after by global corporations in the US, the UK, Canada, Singapore and Denmark, for remote work roles such as software engineering, statistics, trading/retail, and product development. Notably, workers born after the 1980s (25.4%) and 1990s (67%) were the most open to remote-working and capturing most of the global work opportunities. 

For the region as a whole, APAC firms hired globally at the fastest rate, as far as the data analyzed was concerned. Remote workers from the Philippines were the most sought after, with top five roles being in software engineering/development; product design, product management; quality assurance, and project management. Roles for software engineers, sales and product development was the top three most popular roles, mirroring those for Hong Kong.

According to Deel spokesperson Karen Ng: “The talent shortage is still a pain point, but we’re seeing Hong Kong companies looking globally to fill talent gaps in the market, and are adding more remote workers to their workforce – even as the city is opening up. By now we know that Hong Kong’s workforce wants more flexibility, and we are pleased to see that companies are also embracing this future of work, and are using global hiring as a way to access the best talent they can get without being restricted by geographical borders.”