简体中文
Hong Kong Chief Secretary Carrie Lam said on Monday that ageing population and foreseeable shortage of labor force may considerably drag the city’s economy behind.
Lam said at a public consultation conference that the latest labor projection shows that by 2041, nearly one third of the territory’s population will be 65 years old or above. The number of this group of people will climb up to 2.61 million by 2031, which is more than double of the figure in 2012. It will further soar to 2.56 million by 2041.
She said this rapid pace of ageing population will diminish the city’s size of labor force, from 58.8 pct in 2012 down to 49.5 pct in 2041. With the retirement of the baby boom generation in the coming years, the number of retired people will transcend that of entering the labor force.
“Our labor force is expected to grow from 3.52 in 2012 to 3.71 million in 2018, and then decline to 3.51 million in 2035, before a moderate growth after that, Lam said.
Despite the number of workers are about the same in 2012 and 2035, they have to feed much more people given the population growth.
“Excluding foreign workers, those in the labor force in 2012 served 6.85 million people in city; But in 2041, the same number of people will have to support the livelihood of 7.98 million people, Lam said.
She noted that over the past 20 years, the average economic growth of Hong Kong was about four pct, one forth of it came from the growth of labor force, and the rest accounted for the increase in productivity. If the number of workers goes downhill in 2018, it would be a tough task to maintain the same extent of GDP growth in the future. This will shrink the government’s tax income, causing detriment to public services such as medical services and poverty alleviation.
She said the government has launched public engagement exercise on population policy for four months to collect ideas of the citizens. Meanwhile, the Secretariat of the Steering Committee on Population Policy chaired by her also enumerated five resolutions to tackle the problem.
Key to the solutions being removing barriers of foreign workers of entering Hong Kong’s labor market, improving education and training, building up human capital, assisting female in childbearing and care-giving, so that they can free themselves for either part-time or full-time jobs, and tap the valuable pool of elderly resources to create new impetus to the economic development.
