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if not positively criminal in their associations.
Older men who
have not formed a permanent association with a big firm are very
vulnerable, as are older women who have returned to employment after
marriage. Recently-arrived immigrants (there is still a steady flow,
legal and illegal, from mainland China) are obliged to concentrate
on the Kowloon side from want of main island living space and form a
pool of labour with limited knowledge of local pay and job opportunities
"Hawking" is not such a resort against unemployment as is sometimes
suggested; there are currently only 40,000 licensed in Hong Kong (with
perhaps 20,000 illegal ones); and a recent study indicated that they
were mostly older people, with juvenile family helpers, and that 70%
of them had been in business for more than 10 years. In a few higher-
qualified occupations, there appears to be at least the beginnings of
an "educated unemployed" problem: at the least, the width of present
differentials among people with higher-education or professional
qualifications does not suggest any great shortage of junior entrants
to most of these.
40 39.00)
All this is not to say that there have not been occasions
when an intense shortage of labour in particular sectors under boom
conditions has had a general effect on the Hong Kong labour market.
is Only that this far from being its normal condition. But how far does
A the picture of a highly competitive market for labour apply on the
employers' side? At first sight, the diversity of wage-rates and
associated welfare provisions or fringe benefits to which I have
already referred appears to combine with the apparent fragmentation
of employers' associations to support this picture, suggesting an
The minimum school-leaving age is to be raised to 14 -
but not, we understand, until 1930.
..../