Employers group calls for labour import scheme review
Survey finds firms struggling to find new staff, with some vacancies still unfilled after a year
The city's largest employers' group has called for a review of the labour importation scheme, after a survey of 160 companies found almost half of them with vacancy rates of between 6 and 15 per cent.
The Employers' Federation polled 160 firms across the city in September and October. The companies surveyed employ a total of more than 100,000 staff and are from 11 industries.
The survey found that 73 of the firms had vacancies of up to 5 per cent of its workforce. Another 49 had vacancies of 6 to 10 per cent, and 20 had vacancies of 11 to 15 per cent.
"Two companies said they needed to fill vacancies of more than 26 per cent," the federation's chief executive, Louis Pong Wai-yan, added. He said one of these companies was from the retail sector while the other was from the estate management and construction sector.
"Some companies couldn't even fill their vacancies after a year of trying to recruit people," he said.
Vacancies for customer service positions appear to be some of the most difficult to fill. Eleven of 92 firms with such vacancies said they took five to six months to fill these positions.