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Following is the transcript (English portion) of a media session by the Financial Secretary, Mr Henry Tang, on the latest unemployment rate this (December 18) afternoon at the Central Government Offices:
Financial Secretary: I would like to announce the latest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the period of September to November. The unemployment rate has fallen from 8% to 7.5%. This is the same as the 7.5% recorded in March in the pre-SARS days, so it is a very significant drop in the unemployment rate. And underemployment also went down, by 0.1% to 3.4%. Total unemployment has decreased by 18,000 persons to 264,000 persons, and underemployment has gone down by 3,500 to 117,000 persons. The main areas of most apparent decrease in unemployment are in wholesale/retail, restaurants, import/export, amusement and recreational services, and in fact the construction industry has seen a decrease in the unemployment rate. Total employment has seen an increase of 14,400 persons, to 3,217,000. And also one significant point is the Labour Department has received 16% more vacancies from the private sector. Although the figures are very encouraging, I do like to repeat that the employment situation is full of challenges because of the structural adjustment of our economy and I believe the adjustment period is still ongoing and we all have to work harder together in order to improve the figures further.
Reporter: Mr Tang, two questions. How do you explain the significant drop in unemployment rate in the past season, and the second is what are you doing to resolve this short-term employment problem?
Financial Secretary: The first question regarding the significant drop in unemployment - I believe it is a combination of several factors. Firstly I believe it is because there is an increased confidence that the future economy is going to be reasonably well and therefore jobs are being created in order to cater for an increased demand. As far as the seasonally adjusted factor is concerned, actually I am not concerned about these seasonal changes because our figures are seasonally adjusted already, so it has reflected the high season, so to speak, of Christmas and Chinese New Year. As far as your question regarding short-term employment, I have received many opinions, views and also have engaged in numerous discussions regarding the short-term employment that have been created and are due to expire in the early part of next year. The SAR Government places a lot of emphasis on the employment situation of the community and we are in the process of collating our views internally regarding those jobs so we will be able to make an announcement shortly.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
End/Thursday, December 18, 2003
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