Editorial | Boost employment, training for healthier population growth
- Hong Kong population ticks up for second year in a row, but labour and and workforce shortages persist despite talent scheme admissions and one-way permit arrivals
Changing demographics continue to cloud Hong Kong’s post-Covid recovery. While there are more signs of the city returning to healthy population growth, the shrinking workforce and labour shortages are still holding back the economy. The road ahead remains challenging.
Following a worrying exodus fuelled by the pandemic and political uncertainties, the overall population has edged up for the second year in a row to 7.5 million in 2023. The government attributed the increase to more citizens returning from overseas after the lifting of Covid-19 curbs and admissions of mainlanders and overseas talent under various schemes.
Separately, the number of babies born last year also increased for the first time in six years. A total of 33,200 births were recorded in 2023, a 2 per cent increase over the previous year and the first uptick since 2017.
The figure, however, is still considerably lower than the 54,400 deaths recorded last year, resulting in a natural decrease of 21,200 in population.
The births are more a result of life returning to normal after Covid, rather than the HK$20,000 cash incentives for newborns introduced by the government last October. Whether there will be a baby boom as a result remains to be seen.
Admittedly, an overall 0.4 per cent rise, or 30,500 residents, offers no relief to a city suffering from the double whammy of an ageing population and an ongoing brain drain. But the situation would have been worse had it not been mitigated by the government’s aggressive efforts to grab overseas talent.
