Around 35,000 non-local workers had arrived in Hong Kong as of late August since the labour import scheme was launched in 2023, a minister has said.
Workers imported under the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS) accounted for around 1 per cent of the city’s labour force, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun said on Wednesday in a written reply to legislator Frankie Ngan’s questions on ensuring employment opportunities for local workers.
The government does not have data on the proportion of local workers in individual job categories, he said.
The labour chief was asked if the government had plans to enforce a stricter ratio of local to imported workers for more professions, apart from the jobs of waiters and junior cooks announced in Chief Executive John Lee’s 2025 Policy Address last month.
The new measure requires employers to apply the ratio based on the positions they are trying to fill, rather than across their total workforce. Employers are also required to have a six-week local recruitment period before they can start hiring non-local workers.
The new policy, which focuses on job categories with more imported workers, was a government response to changes in the labour market of particular industries in a “targeted manner,” to prioritise local employment, Sun said on Wednesday.
The minister went on to say that employers must report the number of full-time local employees “truthfully” when submitting labour import applications. Those who make false or misleading statements are liable to criminal prosecution.
“The Government will continue to closely monitor changes in the local labour market and the manpower situation of different industries, and adopt a flexible and targeted approach in making adjustments to the implementation arrangements of ESLS if necessary,” Sun wrote.
The labour import scheme, introduced in 2023 to alleviate the city’s manpower crunch, has come under fire amid rising unemployment rates in some sectors, particularly in the food and beverage and construction sectors. Emerging cases of employers abusing the mechanism by favouring imported workers over locals have also stoked concerns about the scheme.
Ngan asked Sun about illegal work in the city, citing cases of individuals with no right to work in Hong Kong coming to the city to provide services after soliciting business through social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu.
The minister responded by saying that the government staged 12,543 operations against illegal employment in the city between January and August. The monthly average number of operations increased by 5.1 per cent this year compared with 2024.
The authorities also arrested and prosecuted more illegal workers and employers on average this year compared to last year. A total of 756 illegal workers were prosecuted as of the end of August, marking a monthly average that is 11.9 per cent higher than in 2024.
There was a 12.7 per cent increase in the monthly average number of employers prosecuted after the government charged 127 individuals in the first eight months of 2025.
In August, a pest control company was barred from hiring non-local workers for one year after it refused to hire a qualified local applicant during the four-week local recruitment under the scheme, “without reasonable grounds.”
Later that month, the Labour Department barred a Chinese restaurant from hiring imported workers for two years as an administrative sanction for sacking local employees after hiring imported labour under the ESLS.
