CY Leung gives biggest hint yet that controls on overseas labour may be loosened

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has dropped what trade union leaders see as the strongest hint yet that controls on imported overseas labour may be relaxed in a bid to ease the city’s worker shortage.

Leung took to his blog yesterday to call on citizens to be aware of the shortage as unemployment fell.

Leung wrote that the government would “continue to develop the city’s economy, including industries that need new blood from the grass-roots labour force, to provide more employment opportunities”.

However, he said it was impossible for the city’s workforce to keep growing. “Even though the government has been providing incentives for people to help themselves through employment, we have to notice that it is unlikely for the city to enlarge its labour force as we did in the past,” he wrote.

He supported his argument with unemployment data released yesterday – which showed a rate of 3.2 per cent for the three months from October to December last year, down 0.1 per cent on the three-month period that ended in November. The city’s workforce now numbers 3,760,400, a record high.

“The shortage of labour and land will be the two major factors hindering economic development. To keep the growth ... we have to take notice of the problem,” Leung wrote.