CHINESE Mainland employees spend the shortest time in employment with employers than other workers in major Asian job markets, a survey released yesterday reveals.

Among the 673 respondents surveyed on the Chinese mainland, about 52 people said that they had worked for each employer for less than two years, most of them spending between 19 to 24 months.

Workers who spent less than two years in a position accounted for only 28 percent of those surveyed in Japan and 35 percent in Hong Kong and Singapore.

The survey, conducted by Hudson Recruitment, asked nearly 2,500 decision makers in multinational corporations in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore about their hiring and staff retention.

Media, public relations and advertising firms reported the shortest average staff tenure with 84 percent of their employees leaving the job in two years or less, while only two percent stayed in the one place for more than three years.

Other sectors such as banking, consumer, information technology and manufacturing followed, the report said.

Angie Eagan, Hudson's general manager in Shanghai, said that the high turnover was brought by a continuous shortage of skills in Chinese mainland.

"People always want a bigger salary and they will keep looking for opportunities," Eagan said, adding that the high level of head hunting made it easy for employees to hop from job to job.