"Actually, the recovery helped improve China's labor market from the second quarter of this year," said Danny Yuan, managing director for Manpower China. "Now, employers are more confident of hiring people next year,"

Xu Zhixue, senior consultant with Beijing-based Zuoyou Consulting Group, a leading local human resource service provider, corroborated Yuan.

Zuoyou's clients are usually big State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in telecom, aerospace and mining sectors, such as Beijing Mobile. "They (SOEs) were worried over the economic trend and most of them had scaled back their recruitment," Xu said.

"But since the last quarter, they have recovered their confidence. Now, we are much busier than before," he said.

China's economy began showing strong signals of recovery in the third quarter of this year, with GDP growth reaching 8.9 percent. Decline in exports began easing off, too, and the sector is expected to have taken to the growth trajectory in late 2009.

According to Manpower, employers in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors could be the biggest recruiters next year, with the mining and construction industries registering the fastest growth in the past quarter.

The survey also shows employers in cities like Chongqing, Xi'an, Qingdao, Wuhan, and Suzhou expect to see a stronger hiring environment than their counterparts in major cities.