Source: Bloomberg
Hong Kong's re -opening materials will bring more business, but the service industry in Hong Kong is unable to benefit from it because they are difficult to persuade employees to return to their jobs.
Restaurant owner Yeung is one of them: After the shopkeeper resigned during the downturn caused by the new crown epidemic, he found that it is difficult to find people, especially chefs.
"If my chef resign now, you can find a job the next day, and it is difficult to leave them here," said Yeung, 30.He also added that compared with the moment, he had previously reduced employees' salary by 30-40 %.
The Hong Kong economy may shrink 3 % last year. At present, Hong Kong hopes to attract a large number of tourists to pour in to revive the economy.However, the problems left by the previous border closure and strict social distance restrictions have led to a shortage of labor, and employees leave the tourism -related industry.
Recruitment is very tricky, because the potential labor has shifted to the industries they think they think they are smaller, or they simply leave Hong Kong.
Even though the enterprise solves the challenges of short -term recruitment, economists have warned that long -term prospects are still severe.
"Several structural factors are affecting, such as decreased local labor, current labor input policies, and the ability to improve local workers' skills and re -training," said Chen Chen, an economist of Oxford Economic Research Institute.He added that although the border was open, these problems were unlikely to be resolved soon.
Habits of labor
At present, the labor of the labor is derived from the difficulties of Hong Kong. The tourism -related industry was first hit by the anti -government protests in 2019, and then the restrictions of the new crown epidemic.
At the time of business, many hotels and restaurants have been forced to shorten work hours, reduce salary, and allow employees to leave or simply suspend business.Affected by a serious epidemic, Hong Kong's overall unemployment rate once reached 5.4 % in April last year, the highest level in the past year.
Although the unemployment rate is still higher than 2018, it has slowed down in recent months.The Hong Kong Government Statistics Department announced on Thursday that the unemployment rate last month fell to 3.5 %.This is the lowest level since the epidemic began in January 2020.
But this improvement does not necessarily be transformed into the good news of the service industry, because the former service industry employees have no motivation to return to their posts.
"I don't think I will return to that industry anymore," said Lau, 28.Earlier last year, she resigned from the work of a luxury hotel company for vaccination policy.
Since then, she has been holding administrative work in a property management company."Welfare, salary and working hours are much better than the hotel industry," she said.
Winnie Chan, manager of the Hong Kong Hotel Owner Federation, said that concerns about occupational stability are still one of the problems that plague the former hotel employees.
"Many people just do the same operation in other fields, and often think that these industries are more stable, so they will not come back," she said.
Data show that even if employment is restored, there is no way to be filled.The MOOVUP report shows that the number of job recruitment in Hong Kong in October exceeded 45,000.This number is more than double last March.
"Different from the early stage of the 2020 epidemic, front -line employees have a large number of job opportunities and currently have more bargaining skills," said Geoffrey Yau, co -founder and CEO of MOOVUP.
This has also transformed into an increase in salary.MOOVUP data shows that the overall monthly salary of full -time employees in December was HK $ 15,000 (about S $ 2527), an increase of 7.1 % over the beginning of the year.
YAU said that the continuous rise in costs will damage the profit margin of employers.
