xi
7.
choice is much reduced by age, given the present pattern of labour
demand in HK old people have to take whatever work they can get,
at the lowest wages. There are many rigidities inhibiting labour
mobility in HK and the 1974-75 recession must have enhanced them,
by injecting greater uncertainty into the minds of workers.
Segmentation of the labour market:
It must be clear by now that labour is far from homogeneous,
despite the low skill requirements of HK industry. Age and sex are
fundamental variables stratifying the labour force and hence
segmenting the labour market. It was common up to 1974 to speak of
full employment and labour scarcity in HK, a tendency which has
revived now that unemployment has returned to pre-1974 levels. But
it is obvious that, while there may be shortages of certain kinds
of labour in some industries, it is possible for considerable
surpluses to exist elsewhere. The employability of youths lacking
secondary education is much lower than that of their female
equivalents, for example. Older people cannot get jobs demanding
high-speed, precision work. The family system and the non-wage
sector may conceal unemployment, containing as they do men and
women who no longer seek wage employment because there are too
many others like them in the same position (thereby driving wages
down to levels unacceptable to all but the most desperate).
Moreover, as long as labour force participation rates are dynamic
(children stay at school longer, women move in and out of domestic
unpaid employment, etc), it is nonsense to talk of 'full employment',
as do England and Rear. The articulation of the wage labour market
with other sectors employing labour needs further study.
The interesting questions, which we cannot begin to
Why do manufacturing
even when there are pools
Snippets of answers are
here, are: What are the long-term rigidities preventing HK's
labour force from converting surpluses in stagnant sectors into an
available supply for booming industries?
employers persist in hiring young girls,
of labour ready to be tapped elsewhere?
contained in the notes. At this stage it is sufficient to point
out that the myth of labour market freedom is a convenient
rationalisation of social neglect for those who do not wish to
perceive the unfreedom, inequality and exploitation which mark
the lives of many of HK's workers. It is for this reason that the