Hong Kong No 2 official Eric Chan predicts city will bring in 100,000 people under talent admission schemes this year
- Chief Secretary Eric Chan says applications for various talent admission schemes have already exceeded 80,000 in first five months
- Authorities have approved 49,000 applications, with nearly half under new Top Talent Pass Scheme
Hong Kong’s No 2 official on Saturday predicted the city would be able to bring in more than 100,000 people this year as applications for various talent admission schemes had already exceeded 80,000 in the first five months.
The figures greatly exceed the government’s original yearly targets, according to Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki, as authorities had approved 49,000 applications so far.
“Initially we set the annual goal of 35,000 workers as an objective, but it turns out we received more than 80,000 applications in just five months. So, I think this year we could have more than 100,000 people,” he told a radio programme.
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About 84,000 applications reached authorities from January to May through the different schemes, according to a government spokeswoman. The Top Talent Pass Scheme, launched in late December, accounted for about 32,000 of the hopefuls.
The government had approved 58 per cent, or about 49,000, of this year’s total applications as of last month. Nearly half, or 21,000, were for the new talent pass.
The popularity of the schemes proved many people were still confident about the city’s future, Chan said. “These people are resourceful and they are coming to work in Hong Kong because they know for certain that the economic outlook is good.”
By the end of 2022, Hong Kong’s population stood at 7.33 million with a workforce of 3.46 million, the latter of which was 6 per cent lower than a peak of 3.68 million in 2018.
However, headhunters warned that not everyone who obtained a visa would end up arriving, while employers and the government should help foreign talent settle in the city.
“Their visas might be fine, but can they manage to find a job here? For top talent, they are sought after globally. They might have obtained other visas and [received] attractive local opportunities too,” said Armstrong Lee Hon-cheung, managing director of Worldwide Consulting Group.
The recruitment professional said he was cautious about the government’s prediction, noting that it would be a good result if 70 per cent of approved applicants landed in the city.
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Professor Frankie Lam King-sun, a human resource management scholar at Lingnan University, echoed the caveat on talent arrivals, but said current application numbers were not surprising.
“Based on the various talent schemes, 100,000 is doable,” Lam said. “[But] one of the fine-tuning processes needed is: will they actually come, and if so, for how long?”
Both Lam and Lee emphasised the importance of employers easing the burden of hefty housing costs for those workers to keep them in the city longer.
“For a managerial-level professional, the proportion of salary spent on housing is about 15 to 25 per cent. They will definitely take this into account in their consideration,” Lee explained.
The headhunter added that employers currently have no means to reach people who have arrived in the city under various talent schemes. He urged the government to set up a platform for employers to reach out to talent, facilitating employment and boosting the prospects of new arrivals.
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Separately, Chan said the planned introduction of 20,000 low-skilled workers from outside the city would not offset the number of labourers lost over the last five years, with the government investing in the local workforce to fill the vacancies.
“We are keen to import labour – not because we want to replace local workers,” he said. “If employers stopped investing in Hong Kong because of the labour shortage and then triggered economic problems, we would all suffer together.”
Some local residents and expatriates left the city for good amid nearly three years of Covid-19 travel restrictions and the imposition of the national security law in 2020.
Deputy Financial Secretary Michael Wong Wai-lun on Wednesday suggested that the emigration wave had “stabilised” and the population was expected to grow again to hit a peak in the 2040s, based on a yet-to-be-released estimate by the Census and Statistics Department.
