Get a degree or become a plumber: which is really better for our youth, and Hong Kong?
Peter Kammerer says Hong Kong is paying the price for overvaluing university degrees and undervaluing vocational training, especially as electricians, plumbers, carpenters and the like are making better-than-average salaries
But there’s more than a 1,000-year-old saying at play. “Lowly” jobs also happen to be ones that involve getting hands dirty, often in environments that don’t have air conditioning. That is at odds with the claim that Hongkongers are hard workers. It also means that if we’re no longer prepared to put up with sweat and dirt, we’ve become soft, pampered and, dare I say, lazy.
Paradoxically, many of those sniffed-at jobs happen to be the better-paid ones in our city. Try this out with your Hong Kong colleague or friend: how much do you think a plumber earns? The answer will most likely be a little above the minimum wage. At present, that is HK$34.50 an hour or HK$310.50 for a nine-hour day. But, proving how wrong perceptions can be, as of March, government figures showed that the average daily wage for the trade was HK$1,442.10.
Pick any blue-collar job and you’ll get similarly surprising numbers, whether for an electrician, carpenter, concreter, bricklayer, gas fitter, or even a bamboo scaffolder. Workplace dangers obviously factor into the salary of a number of these, especially if it involves working on high-rise construction sites.
A bamboo scaffolder, for example, was averaging HK$1,883.80 a day, a concreter, HK$1,935.50, and a bar-bender HK$2,187.20. Such work obviously doesn’t guarantee a particular monthly salary, as an office job does, but with a contract or steady work, it can be considerably above the monthly average Hong Kong wage of HK$15,819.
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He also laments the tough health regulations that mean school groups can no longer so easily tour the bakery and perhaps inspire children to one day become bread, cake or pastry-makers. My friend has consequently become an advocate for apprenticeships, seeing them as not just necessary for employment, but also as providing an invaluable foundation for ongoing career development that may also one day involve tertiary study.
For Hong Kong, there are challenges beyond parental pressure to overcome. Academic education is not for everyone, so we need to have properly-funded vocational education and training facilities. More small and medium-sized companies need to be encouraged to take on apprentices. Unless we end the stigma and provide the necessary investment to ensure the employability and satisfaction of our workforce, our economy will suffer.
Peter Kammerer is a senior writer at the Post