Employment in Hong Kong
[6] The momentum in improving working conditions, Occupational Safety and health and employees' rights and benefits has been kept up through an extensive programme of labour legislation.
Hong Kong aims at applying relevant International labour standards as the local circumstances allow.
Subject to certain protective restrictions, children aged 13 and 14 who are attending school may take up part-time employment in the non-industrial sectors.
The tribunal comes under the Judiciary and provides a quick, inexpensive and informal forum for settling labour disputes.
To reduce accidents and guard against ill-health, efforts are focused on legislative control, safety training, education and promotion.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance and the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance, 31 sets of regulations have been made to cover various aspects of hazardous activities in factories, building and engineering construction sites, restaurants, catering establishments, commercial premises and other workplaces.
In 2001, 597 training courses on safety legislation for 6,391 people and 218 tailor-made briefing sessions for 6,874 employees in private and public sector organisations were given.
The Occupational Safety Charter, setting out the rights of employees to enjoy a safe working environment and the employers' obligations to reduce the risk of accidents, remains a major promotion programme and as at the end of 2001, 558 organisations, including employer and employee bodies, have subscribed voluntarily to the charter.
All employers are required to have valid employees' compensation insurance policies to cover their liabilities both under the ordinance and at common law.
Jobs opening to applicants attaining a university degree certificate are also available on the Higher Education Employment Information e-Platform (HEEIP) website maintained by the Labour Department.
Apart from the channels aforementioned, job-seekers can find job information through the Telephone Employment Service Centre of the Labour Department.
To improve its operating environment and enhance the quality of service, the Labour Department has re-provisioned its Job Centres to include such facilities as briefing room, reading area and audio-visual corner for job-seekers.
There are plenty of private channels for finding a job in Hong Kong, such as websites, apps, newspapers, magazines, employment agencies.
The employment distribution among various industry sectors was as follows: (Note: There may be a slight discrepancy between the sum of individual items and the total as shown in the table owing to rounding) Hong Kong's economy has historically been driven by its status as one of the major transport and logistic hubs for East Asia.
Financial and banking services have become a much larger part of the high-end economy in Hong Kong and one of the major drivers of economic growth.
It requires the Chief Executive of Hong Kong to propose a minimum wage level, which he will do for the first time in November 2010; the Legislative Council will either approve or reject the amount.
In September As of 2007[update], the average monthly wage rate for the supervisory, technical, clerical and miscellaneous non-production workers was HK$11,712.
The overall average daily wage for the workers on public works construction projects was HK$565.60 at the end of 2007.
[11] In November 2010, legislators of the Hong Kong SAR Government agreed to set a minimum wage level of HK$28.00 (UK£2.29 or US$3.60) per hour, which came into force on 1 May 2011.
