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Increased educational opportunities, by enlarging the pool of
qualified manpower, will have the consequence of reducing inter-
firm mobility even further. There is some evidence that this
position may have already been reached in the junior clerical job
market.
(b) To hear some employers talk one would think that most HK
workers change job several times a year. In fact, high levels of
turnover are confined to the booming manufacturing industries (electronics, garments, plastic toys, etc) whose profitability and
insatiable demand for semi-skilled, young, predominantly female
operatives does encourage workers to shop around for marginal wage
increments. The unmarried young, particularly girls with less than
Form 5 education, are liable to seek the short-term rewards of
dead-end jobs in fly-by-night industries which have no guaranteed
future. There is a substantial floating post of labour in
manufacturing which can bid up wages at times of peak demand,
precisely because of its willingness to change jobs. Construction,
transport, seafaring, catering and other sectors employing men in
casual unskilled and semi-skilled manual work are also vulnerable
to rapid turnover, particularly since mobility between trades (as well as between firms) is relatively easy, in the absence of union
control over entry. So there is considerable turnover in the more
volatile sectors of the labour market, but we should not allow this
fact to dominate our vision of HK, so that it appears as an economic
system in which labour is a near perfectly mobile factor of production, switching readily from one stagnant trade to the next
boo ming industry.
(c) Of fundamental importance to the functioning of the labour
market is the co-existenee with large scale business of a proliferat-
ing small scale sector, composed of everything from machine shops
to streethawkers. This sector is an important safety valve for
frustrated ambitions thwarted bureaucrats can turn to independent
enterprise, skilled men can become their own bosses. Redundant or
poorly-paid workers can take up self-employment in hawking or, more
commonly, they can supplement wage earnings with part-time self-
employment. If they go bust, there is a reasonable chance of finding
work for wages.
This sector also allows larger-scale manufacturing
firms to stabilise production
putting out in times of boom and