Question:

I am working on a project on 'recruiting temporary labor'  for my MBA class.
I was looking for temporary labor markets trends in UK, Hong Kong and
Singapore. Could you guide me as to which trade journals/database I should
be looking for?

Response:

Both Lexis Nexis Academic and BSP are our two main agregators of trade publications. Here are some searches to give you a sense of how you can search them:

1. Lexis Nexis Academic > General Search
Search for: "temporary w/1 (labor or labour or employ! or job! or recruitment or hire or hiring or position!)"
Topics/add keywords or index terms: "AND STATISTICS OR BUSINESS FORECASTS OR EMERGING MARKETS OR TRENDS"
Source: Major World Publications
Once you get the results, Show: Expanded List and Sort: Relevance > narrow by geography > UK (or other available options in the left hand side)

2. Lexis Nexis Academic > General Search (tab)
Search for: singapore or UK or "hong kong"
Topics/add keywords or index terms: (STATISTICS OR BUSINESS FORECASTS OR EMERGING MARKETS OR TRENDS) AND TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT
Source: Major World Publications
Once you get the results, Show: Expanded List and Sort: Relevance

You can try running other searches changing some of the parameters like different keywords (e.g. some of the articles mentioned the phrase "short-term contract workers" ) or the Source (e.g. if you change the General Search tab to the News tab, you can select a source called "Business news publications" using the drop down menu) and of course the publication date parameters.