Hong Kong’s labor market has seen its sharpest drop on record, underscoring the territory’s challenges with an aging population and outflow of talent.
The territory’s working population last year fell 94,100, down 2.4 percent, according to data released on Monday by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department.
It is the largest decline in the territory’s labor force since the government began keeping records in 1985.
Photo: Bloomberg
Hong Kong is running an uphill battle as the government seeks to kick-start an economy that recorded its third annual contraction in four years. Tens of thousands of people, including lawyers and bankers, left the territory following the National Security Law and strict COVID-19 pandemic curbs.
A labor shortage would affect services for the public and the territory’s competitiveness, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) said at a daily news conference yesterday.
Lee has made attracting talent a key priority for his administration. In October last year, he started a global talent program that includes a two-year visa plan for high-income workers and top university graduates.
So far, the program has mostly attracted interest from Chinese. Most of the about 10,000 applications are from the mainland, according to local media.
The territory is also competing with Singapore to attract wealth business. The Hong Kong government last month announced that it would cut taxes for family offices.
One of Hong Kong’s biggest hurdles is staffing its tourism sector dented by COVID-19 curbs.
The industry, along with exports, could help the economy grow by an estimated 7.6 percent, according to a Goldman Sachs Group Inc forecast.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
RSS