The recent rise in Hong Kong’s poverty rate to 20.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, up from 18.3 per cent in 2019, as highlighted by Oxfam’s Hong Kong Poverty Report 2024, reveals a stark reality. The percentage of economically inactive pooris increasing. Despite an overall population decline of 48,900 since last year, the number of economically inactive poor peoplehas risen by 42,700.
Only 19.7 per cent of the poor are in the labour market, compared to 64.4 per cent of the non-poor. Authorities should deal with this problem by improving the welfare system and helping the unemployed poor join the workforce. The tax-based welfaremodel faces sustainability challenges because of the post-pandemic budget deficit. Therefore, introducing policies that removeemployment barriers for the poor should be a primary focus.
In Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s policy address earlier this month, he introduced various policies, such as establishing a working group to promote the “silver economy” and improving childcare to support working parents in the labour force.However, for this approach to work, new jobs must be created and filled. The reality is that Hong Kong’s labour market hasbeen shrinking since 2019.
Figures from the Census and Statistics Department show a decline in employed people from 2,863,708 in the second quarter of 2019 to 2,724,096 in the second quarter of 2024. This is despite the delicate balance between various emigration andimmigration schemes during that period.
Importantly, this decrease in employment does not indicate recruitment difficulties since the number of job vacancies has also fallen from 73,462 to 69,444. To protect job opportunities for local poor, both pro-labour groups and non-governmentalorganisations have raised concerns about importing more foreign labour. But Lee’s policy speech failed to address this.
Moreover, the government has announced it will exempt around 20,000 full-time non-local undergraduate students from parttime employment restrictions. This creates a stark contradiction: the government aims to alleviate poverty by creating jobs while implementing policies that could reduce employment opportunities for those most in need.
Dr Terry Ming Fung Leung
