Asian techs feel the job cut sting

By CNN's Kristie Lu Stout

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- More than 200,000 job cuts have been announced in the last few months, and Asia's millions of tech workers are beginning to feel the sting.

Asia, a major center of manufacturing for the technology sector, is wrestling with slowing growth and plunging demand.

To fight off the global downturn, tech heavyweights from Tokyo to Taipei are swinging the axe.

"It's getting bad and it's going to get worse," says Hong Kong-based executive search consultant Paul McGrory at EL Consulting.

Knock-on effect

"In Asia specifically, there is a latency effect, a knock-on effect," McGrory adds.

"What happens in the U.S. typically comes two years later. This is a negative effect and it's coming very quick."

Japanese electronics giant NEC plans to lay off 4,000 workers. IT mammoth Fujitsu is launching a massive early retirement scheme.

And in Taiwan, notebook maker Acer sacked almost 1,000 employees.

Analysts say Asian tech firms are cutting jobs especially in export-heavy sectors.

"At this moment we think that Singapore and Taiwan will get hurt a lot because of the economic downturn as well as the semiconductor downturn," says Gartner Group analyst Dorothy Lai.

"These two countries will have a lot of exports, so that will hurt them."

Asia's portals have also been hit by the hack attack. Both Chinadotcom and Sina.com announced significant job cuts.

And Hong Kong telco PCCW fired hundreds of workers in its Internet division, but the worst may be over for the sector.

"We see the end of the dotcom bubble in Asia, cyclical things and structural changes in some sectors that will lead to a changing in the way some workforces are deployed," says Gartner's Andrew Chetham.

China hopes

While slashing staff at home, some IT firms are investing in China.

Acer expects to move more than 50 percent of its production to the Mainland in the next few years.

And other bright spots loom on China's horizon.

"You talk about the WTO, you talk about the Beijing Olympics, you talk about a lot of infrastructure, a lot of the telecom sector being open to a lot of development work moving up to China because of the cost reasons," says EL Consulting's McGrory.