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Following is the transcript (English portion) of the remarks by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, on the latest unemployment statistics at a media stand-up today (August 17):
Reporter: What's the reason for the improvement, will you foresee the situation continue to improve?
Secretary for Labour and Welfare: Yes. The improvement this time is quite notable. A 0.3% drop in the unemployment rate. In fact it is quite a fair spread, across the board. Primarily it is because employers' hiring sentiment has strengthened given the sustained economic recovery locally, certainly. Also, if you look at the number of new jobs created for the last two months, we are talking about altogether 16,900 jobs created during two consecutive periods. We are talking about 8,100 new jobs in the last period, plus another 8,800 in the previous quarter. So we are talking about job gains really coming back, a very telling sign that the labour market is reviving gradually and steadily, outstripping the supply of labour growth. This is point number one. The other factor, of course, is that a lot of employers are now more confident in terms of taking on new hands. But having said all these, although the situation is generally on an even keel as it were, fairly optimistic, we must not be complacent because the economic recovery in the United States and Europe are still pretty fragile. The nature of the recovery is pretty fragile and a lot of uncertainties are still hanging around. So we have to be vigilant and continue to monitor the situation closely.
Reporter: Mr Cheung, which particular industry or sector is improving? Any particular reason why? You have mentioned that new graduates are easier to get jobs.
Secretary for Labour and Welfare: In terms of proportion of school-leavers and graduates entering the labour market, we reckon that 51% of these school-leavers and graduates managed to get jobs in the labour market, vis-ˆj-vis 47% last year and 49% in the year before. In other words, the percentage is going up, which means better access to the labour market. It covers a fair spread, particularly in terms of sub-professionals, retail, for example, catering industry as well, financing of course. So it is a fair spread of business services in general. But of course construction is also an area which I believe youngsters should focus their attention because it is huge prospect for them. It meant opportunities in the construction sector because of the infrastructural projects coming on stream in the next decade.
Reporter: Is it real improvement or just people jumping on the bandwagon and say ok I'm also hiring?
Secretary for Labour and Welfare: No, I think the hiring sentiment is pretty real, pretty genuine. There is a need to take on extra staff, extra hands because of business needs.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Issued at HKT 19:35
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