Asia drawing more Americans seeking career opportunities

HONG KONG -- The global recession hit while Ryan Lovell was a student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Lovell was taking business courses while working 30 hours a week for a property developer. He saw funding dry up. Deals being delayed. This first-hand lesson in economics, he says, played a key role in his decision to take a job in Hong Kong last year after graduation.

"The U.S. is not picking up, Europe is having a lot of trouble, and all the opportunity that I'm seeing is here in Asia," says Lovell, 24, a business analyst here for EC Harris, a real estate consulting firm.

For years, foreigners have come to Asia for adventure and career development as its economies have developed at a breakneck speed. But this trend is accelerating after the recession as booming Asian nations provide jobs and other business opportunities that Americans can't find in their own country. American companies such as General Electric and Caterpillar are also expanding aggressively in Asia, and transferring U.S. executives to key positions in the region.

Job placement firms are reporting a surge in American worker interest in booming economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore, China and increasingly, India. Hunt Partners, an executive search firm, estimates that it's getting 50% to 100% more unsolicited résumés from Americans looking for Asia-based positions today compared with before the recession. Other recruiting firms, including Korn/Ferry International, Robert Walters and Manpower are also reporting a significant rise in Americans looking for work in Asia.

Job prospects in the Asia-Pacific region are the strongest in the world, particularly in the sales, management and retail industries, according to the latest survey of employers' hiring intentions by Manpower, a global job agency. And unemployment in many Asian economies is a fraction of that in the U.S., where the jobless rate is 9.1%.

In places such as Singapore, China and Hong Kong, senior executives can usually expect to be paid as much as or more than in the U.S. for a similar position, says Steve Fisher, an executive recruiter at Korn/Ferry. Housing and educational stipends also sweeten the deal.

As long as Asian economies grow faster than developed nations, Asia will continue to draw job seekers, says Homi Kharas, a former chief economist for East Asia at the World Bank. "You have a huge number of jobs in Asia, where it's very difficult for the local talent to meet the kinds of needs the countries have," whether in architecture or radiology, he says.

The migration is going both ways, as Asians are also coming to the U.S. to sharpen skills in professions such as medicine, says Kharas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Yet, for every American who finds a job in Asia, many more go away empty handed. In China, for instance, it's getting harder for foreigners to find jobs at the salaries they expect because expatriate packages are being phased out, and Chinese who studied abroad are returning home to compete with foreigners, says Shaun Rein, author of The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that will Disrupt the World, which is scheduled to be published in March.

Throw in cultural and language barriers, and Asia's pitfalls can outweigh its potential.