Pedestrians walk along a street in Hong Kong on June 16, 2021. (ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP)
Hong Kong’s unemployment rate continued to see a further decline from its 17-year high amid the ongoing economic recovery and receding COVID-19 pandemic, government figures showed.
The number of unemployed workers decreased to 233,300 in the March-to-May period, while the number of underemployed fell to 107,400 in the same period
According to Census and Statistics Department data released on Thursday, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased 0.4 percentage points, from 6.4 percent in the February-to-April period, to 6 percent in the March-to-May period. The underemployment rate also slipped to 2.8 percent in the same period, a 0.5 percentage point decrease from the previous three-month period.
The number of unemployed workers decreased to 233,300 in the March-to-May period, while the number of underemployed fell to 107,400 in the same period.
The combined unemployment rate of the consumption- and tourism-related sectors (retail, accommodation and food services sectors) fell to 9.4 percent. The unemployment rate of food-and-beverage service activities slipped to 11.3 percent, and the unemployment rate of the construction sector declined to 10.3 percent.
“The evolving global pandemic situation remains a key source of uncertainty. As the pace of economic recovery is uneven across sectors, the unemployment rates in some sectors may take a longer time to return to the pre-pandemic levels,” Secretary for Labor and Welfare Law Chi-kwong cautioned in a government statement on Thursday.
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OCBC Wing Hang said it expects the overall jobless rate to fall toward 5 percent in the second half of this year as the overall economy may continue to regain momentum, given the revival of external demand, the subsiding local infections and the local fiscal stimulus, including e-consumption vouchers.
“However, the overall unemployment rate may stay well above the pre-pandemic level for some time as the hardest-hit sectors’ outlook remains clouded by the border controls, which look unlikely to be relaxed in the near term, given the slow vaccination pace and the virus resurgence in some parts of Asia,” OCBC Wing Hang Economist Carie Li Ruofan said.
The unemployment rate will gradually fall back to last year’s level, as more people are hired after vaccinations, and now that effective disease control measures are in place, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said in his blog on Sunday.
But the finance chief said that although the rate is gradually dropping, the city’s job market has a long way to go to get to where it was before the pandemic, when almost everyone was employed.