Employers on the Chinese mainland are expecting the lowest hiring demand for 2012 in the fourth quarter, with about 53 per cent saying they will recruit more people, according to the latest Hudson Report released on Wednesday.

But the report, which questioned 6,400 employers, said hiring demand on the mainland remains the highest among all places surveyed in the Asia-Pacific region, including Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia.

Another 41.4 percent of employers on the Chinese mainland said they would retain their headcount for the last three months of the year, with only 5.1 percent saying they will lay off staff members.

The Hudson report is a quarterly survey of employers' hiring expectations.

Cherol Cheuk, general manager of Hudson Shanghai, said although hiring demand on the Chinese mainland for the fourth quarter is the lowest for the year, this is no surprise as human resources departments normally act conservatively at this time of year when planning for the year ahead and looking back at past months.

Meanwhile, the outlook for the global economy remains bleak as solutions are sought for the eurozone's problems, she said. Combined with the new round of quantitative easing announced by the United States last month, the global economy continues to decline so hiring demand will inevitably be affected, she said.

With a slump in export orders and increased prices of Chinese exports, hiring demand in the manufacturing and industrial sector recorded the biggest drop for the fourth quarter. China's producer price index, which measures inflation at wholesale level, dropped 3.6 percent year-on-year in September, which Cheuk said also helps to worsen the situation.

But there is some good news. The consumer sector is the most positive overall, with about 58 percent of its employers planning to hire more workers. Based on this, media and marketing professionals are in similarly high demand, with 57.4 percent of employers in this sector planning to increase staff in the next quarter. The information technology and telecommunication sector is also strong, with 56.3 percent of bosses planning to recruit more staff members in the next three months.