HONG KONG, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Tour guide Tony Tong has only worked for three days since the Spring Festival in January this year.
"I expected business to recover as violent incidents subsided. However, the COVID-19 outbreak made many tour guides like me continue to struggle," Tong said. "As I earn much less but still have the same bills from rent to food costs, I can hardly make ends meet."
Tong's son also lost his job in the airport as the number of flight passengers plunged in recent months.
The difficulty faced by Tong's family is also shared by many Hong Kong residents as a wide range of industries from tourism to transportation, yet to recover from the social unrest last year, are struggling amid the epidemic.
Hong Kong's unemployment rate increased from 3.7 percent in the period of December 2019 to February 2020 to 4.2 percent in the period of January to March 2020, the highest in more than nine years, according to the latest statistics released Monday by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government. Both total employment and labor force registered the largest year-on-year declines on record.
"The labor market showed further sharp deterioration as the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted a wide range of economic activities," said Law Chi-kwong, secretary for labor and welfare.
The consumption- and tourism-related sectors were among the hardest-hit, with a combined jobless rate at 6.8 percent, the highest since the August to October 2009 period. The jobless rates of the catering and construction sectors spiked to 8.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively.
The soaring jobless rates came as money-strapped businesses were forced to lay off workers and cut employees' salaries to reduce operation costs in hopes of weathering out the economic hardship. Many shops and restaurants have already shut down.
Sa Sa International, Hong Kong's biggest cosmetics retailer, said it will continue to downsize after a nearly-60-percent decline of sales in its shops in Hong Kong and Macao in the first quarter of the year.
The Hong Kong Retail Management Association predicts more than 10,000 laid-offs in the retail sector from February to May and about 15,000 retailers to close by the end of the year, accounting for a quarter of shops across Hong Kong.
In face of the challenges from the epidemic, the HKSAR government has rolled out a new round of relief package worth 137.5 billion Hong Kong dollars (17.74 billion U.S. dollars), with 81 billion Hong Kong dollars allocated to help businesses pay the wages of their employees.
The government will also earmark six billion Hong Kong dollars to create 30,000 time-limited jobs for people including professionals and graduates in the next two years.
Financial Secretary Paul Chan said pro-employment expenditures of the government will reach 90 billion Hong Kong dollars this time, expected to benefit in total two million Hong Kong residents, with the first batch of subsidies to be distributed by June.
For 26,000 workers in the tourism sector including Tong, there will be a monthly subsidy of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars lasting for six months. "The money from the government is timely for us. Although it cannot completely solve the problem, it can help us go through the difficult time," Tong said.
Although there have been signs that the epidemic is subsiding in Hong Kong, experts said the jobless rate is unlikely to retreat in the short term and warned of lingering pressures on the job market.
While the jobless rate hiked to over eight percent during the SARS outbreak in 2003, Chan said Hong Kong will face an even more difficult situation for the economic recovery this time after the epidemic is controlled, calling for concerted efforts from various sectors of the Hong Kong society to create a stable environment. "Otherwise, we can only get half the result with twice the effort," Chan said. Enditem
