Jake's View | Leung Chun-ying successfully resists employers' migrant labour demands

It would be easy to dismiss the chief executive's latest policy address as just the usual staff New Year party - everyone gets a prize - except for one thing.

Hunt and peck through that speech as I might, I could find no reference to opening the borders wide to migrant workers in order to address employer complaints about critical labour shortages.

I thought I might find it under the heading of Development of the Construction Industry as our government bureaucrats have occasionally sung the chorus to the employer lament in this sector - we need to bring in more foreign workers if we are to meet our targets for infrastructure projects.

But, no, it wasn't there. This paragraph in the speech contained only exhortations to raising productivity and using more advanced technology. All it said about labour shortage is that more effort is needed to tackle the problem. It didn't propose a solution in migrant labour.

I then thought I would find it in the tourism paragraph but what I really took note of here was an admission that tourism "can create a large number of jobs for lower-skilled workers".

How interesting to see government admit it at last. In a wealthy city with low unemployment we have designated as a "pillar industry" a low-wage sector best suited to poverty-stricken start-up economies with high jobless rates.

What the chief executive said here, however, was that we should focus on high-spending visitors in order to "achieve the greatest economic benefits with limited resources". This certainly suggests very strongly that hotels will just have to grin and bear it if they cannot find enough waiters and chambermaids.