Hong Kong’s catering, retail sectors need 100,000 workers, industry heads say, backing imported labour plan despite union objections
- Industry representatives throw weight behind government plan to bring in foreign labour, calling it temporary measure to ease worker shortfall
- Unions push back, saying government should focus on encouraging locals to return to workforce first
Hong Kong’s catering and retail sectors are facing a combined shortfall of as much as 100,000 workers, according to industry leaders who have backed a government plan to import labour despite objections from unions.
Representatives from the sectors voiced their approval over Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s remarks on Tuesday that government bureaus were reviewing the labour demands of different industries to decide whether there was a need to import foreign manpower.
Retail sector legislator Peter Shiu Ka-fai said the industry needed 40,000 more workers on top of its current 210,000, as shops faced a 15 per cent shortage of staff.
He added the shortfall did not include businesses that had closed during the pandemic but were planning to make a comeback.
“The problem is the lack of labour in the market. Different industries are raising their salaries and competing for people,” Shiu said.
“Every industry suffers from labour shortages given the ageing population and emigration. Importing foreign workers can tackle the problem in the short term.”
Shiu suggested following Macau’s practice of bringing in workers from the Greater Bay Area at wages similar to local employees, with those staff able to commute from their homes in mainland China.
Hong Kong last year suffered its biggest drop in the working population since records began in 1985, losing more than 94,000 employees. The figures brought the number of workers who quit the labour force in the past four years to 220,500.
Experts have attributed the drop to the rise in the number of people retiring and the emigration wave. According to official statistics, the city’s median age of residents rose from 31.6 in 1991 to 46.3 in 2021.
Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades president Simon Wong Ka-wo said the catering sector needed up to 60,000 workers on top of its current 200,000, as many had emigrated, retired or switched jobs during the pandemic.
“Workers have to take on many tasks at a time. Fewer people are willing to join the industry, especially the young ones,” Wong said. “The service quality has fallen as well.”
While many eateries were closed during the pandemic, the 60,000 employees were needed to cope with rising demand from newly opened restaurants and existing operators who wanted to resume activities in full, he said.
“We hope to introduce foreign workers temporarily under certain conditions to boost the city’s manpower and ensure proper development of the industry,” Wong said.
He stressed the government should also encourage more locals to return to the job market, including women and retired workers, while increasing subsidised training quotas for workers in small to medium-sized restaurants.
But unions said importing labour was not a solution for now. Lam Chi-chung, the general secretary of the Hong Kong Department Store and Commercial Staff General Union, pointed to some businesses refraining from hiring while the economy was still weak.
“The city has only returned to normal for a few months. Every industry is competing for labour. Should we say the city has insufficient labour? I have some reservations,” Lam said.
The problem was the low salaries in the retail industry, in which the median monthly wage had only increased by HK$800 (US$102) in 2017 to HK$14,800 last year, Lam said.
He said he also hoped the government could further improve childcare services to encourage more women to return to the labour force.
Chiu Kwun-chung, from the labour affairs committee of the Eating Establishment Employees General Union, said the city should only consider importing foreign workers when measures to attract locals failed.
Apart from pay rises, Chiu said, more resources should be put into nurturing younger workers, such as pairing up senior employees with apprentices.
The education and healthcare sectors also face manpower problems, with the former having 7,750 positions unfilled last December, accounting for the most private sector vacancies in the latest government survey.
Lawmaker Tang Fei, also a vice-chairman of the Federation of Education Workers, said schools mainly lacked English teachers with six to 10 years of experience, but he did not see the need to import foreign ones.
“The number of students has been decreasing. The government can take the chance to reduce classes, as well as the number of teachers,” Tang said.
Medical and health services sector lawmaker Dr David Lam Tzit-yuen said he welcomed foreign talent joining the public sector but stressed the Hospital Authority should continue to work on retaining local workers.
“The authority has done a poor job on that as staff are overwhelmed with work, while management has poor communication with frontline workers,” he said.
Public hospitals lost 1,247 doctors between April 2020 and the end of 2022, with only 15 per cent of them retiring, while the government introduced a special registration scheme for non-local medical graduates to practise in the city in 2021.
Lam suggested expanding collaboration between the public and private healthcare sectors to reduce the workload of authority doctors and nurses.
Simon Lee Siu-po, honorary fellow at Chinese University’s Asia-Pacific Institute of Business, said income levels would continue to increase because of the manpower crunch. Importing labour would be one of the solutions to maintain the city’s competitiveness, he said.
