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Lam Ka-sing

Simon Leung, an experienced event coordinator in the social work sector, has been unemployed for nearly 18 months and said he would settle for a job as a security guard or a mooncake production assistant in Hong Kong.
The jobseeker, who holds a civil engineering degree from Queen’s University in Canada, has been surviving as a gig worker after working for a non-governmental organisation.
“As the government’s budget for NGOs was cut by 7 per cent, my contract was not renewed when the financial year ended in March [last year],” Leung, 47, told the Post.
He was among 3,200 jobseekers at a recent Labour Department job fair.
Hong Kong’s unemployment rate jumped to 3.7 per cent in the May to July period, the highest in 33 months, according to statistics released on Tuesday. It rose from 3.5 per cent between April and June.
The rising joblessness was a contrast to the city’s economic growth of 3.1 per cent year on year in the second quarter and 3 per cent in the first three months.
Gary Ng Cheuk-yan, a senior economist with Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, noted that Hong Kong’s economy was “undergoing a jobless recovery”.
“Even if the growth number looks decent, it is not creating as many jobs as in the past,” he said.
“As of March 2025, the number of available jobs was only 94 per cent of the pre-pandemic level.”
Jobsdb, a recruitment platform, said its data showed that the number of job adverts in Hong Kong in the first half was expected to fall by 6 per cent compared with the second half of 2024, reflecting cautious hiring by companies under global economic pressure.
During the same period, the average number of applications for positions advertised on Jobsdb surged by 41 per cent, indicating that competition among jobseekers was intensifying.
Due to factors such as external economic uncertainty and a surge in applications, employers were facing more complex challenges in recruitment, Jobsdb added.
Gary Wan, principal economist and strategist at Dah Sing Financial Group, noted that with cautious hiring plans, the unemployment rate could approach 4 per cent in the coming months.
According to the Census and Statistics Department, the unemployment rate in the “food and beverage service activities” sector climbed from 4.8 per cent for the three months ending June 2023 to 6.4 per cent currently.
There was a similar rise in the retail sector, from 3.5 per cent to 5 per cent, while in construction the increase was from 4.2 per cent to 7.2 per cent, the highest among all industries.
The trend has also hit those with higher education. The unemployment rate for workers with a post-secondary degree rose from 2.5 per cent to 3.4 per cent in the same period, while the rate for managers jumped from 1.5 per cent to 2.2 per cent.
Labour sector legislator Chau Siu-chung expected upward pressure on unemployment rates in the catering and construction sectors to continue in the short term.
Due to residents’ spending in mainland China, changes in travellers’ consumption patterns and increased use of technology in ordering food, the employed population in the catering industry fell by around 2.2 per cent from 223,913 in the first quarter of 2023 to 218,923 in the same period this year, Chau said.

Under the influence of an uncertain property market, the gross value of work on private construction sites in real terms shrank by more than 12 per cent year on year in the first quarter to HK$11.1 billion (US$1.42 billion), leading to a decline in labour demand in the construction industry, he added.
Ricky Chan Wai-chung, an employer representative on the Labour Advisory Board, said many firms were hesitant to hire primarily because of the “uncertain economic environment”.
While companies were “considering” using artificial intelligence (AI) to replace manpower in the long term, Chan believed the significant capital investment required meant the replacement was not prevalent amid the present economic uncertainty.
Chan also attributed the current unemployment figures to other factors, such as the seasonal entry of new graduates into the job market and macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from fraught US-China trade relations.
Roy Ying, a senior lecturer at Hang Seng University and co-chairman of advocacy and policy at the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, echoed Chan’s sentiments about the uncertainties caused by geopolitical tensions between the US and many other countries.
He said there had been more lay-offs in recent months and a freeze in headcount.
“Some sectors, such as the finance and banking industries, have invested heavily in AI adoption in their business processes,” he said.
“I do expect jobs that are replaceable by AI, such as data entry, customer service, and retail positions, are more vulnerable as they can quite easily be replaced by technology,” he said.
He added that if the business outlook was uncertain for employers, “the best way to brace themselves is to look at ways to do more with less, and to invest in the skills that are needed in the future”.
He noted that with such adaptations, new jobs were being created in the areas of AI, fintech and big data.
Meanwhile, human resource organisations such as Ying’s have advocated the need for workers to embrace holistic lifelong learning.
“Technology is moving so fast that we will need to think of other solutions, such as micro-credentials, such as [from] Coursera and LinkedIn Learning, to supplement what we are not able to cover in our academic curriculum,” Ying said.
“For adults, the Continuing Education Fund and the Employees Retraining Board are the two government initiatives that can help them improve their competitiveness.”
In response to queries from the Post, the Labour Department said that it had held 12 large-scale job fairs in the first seven months of this year, collaborating with 267 employers to offer 15,000 vacancies. More than 22,000 jobseekers took part in these fairs, it said.


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Experts cite geopolitical tensions, cautious hiring and tech disruption as causes, but also urge workers to learn new skills, companies to innovate


Experts cite geopolitical tensions, cautious hiring and tech disruption as causes, but also urge workers to learn new skills, companies to innovate.


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Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank

Hong Kong jobless rate could persist as uncertain economy, AI reshape market: experts

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Experts cite geopolitical tensions, cautious hiring and tech disruption as causes, but also urge workers to learn new skills, companies to innovate

Experts cite geopolitical tensions, cautious hiring and tech disruption as causes, but also urge workers to learn new skills, companies to innovate