2
Employment
OF slightly more than 1 million people at work in Hong Kong, over 600,000 are engaged in the manufacturing industries. This is the conclusion reached from a projection of figures recorded in the 1961 census. At that time, 1,211,999 persons were described as 'economically active' and 1,191,099 claimed to be working; of these, 57,400 were counted as employers and 123,861 were working on their own account.
The general employment pattern in the 1961 census showed that over 50 per cent of the working population were engaged in construction, manufacturing, mining, quarrying and the utilities, about 22 per cent in various types of services, 11 per cent in com- merce, 7 per cent in communications and 7 per cent in agriculture, forestry and fishing. Based on this pattern the projected employ- ment figures at the end of 1966 were: Manufacturing 635,300; services 355,000; commerce 175,100; construction 133,700; agricul- ture, forestry and fishing 117,800; communications 116,200; public utilities 25,500; mining and quarrying 11,200. There were also some 22,300 in various other forms of employment, making an estimated total of 1,592,100 employed.
These projected figures give a broader picture than that available from actual statistics collected by the Labour Department, because these are confined to voluntary returns from factories and industrial undertakings only. Thus they do not include out-workers, persons employed in cottage industries, the construction industry, agriculture and fishing, or those employed in unrecorded factories and under- takings. Neither do they include persons employed in commerce and the retail and catering trades. In 1966 these voluntary returns showed that the number of persons directly employed in factories and industrial undertakings totalled 424,155, an increase of 53,417 over the 1965 figure. Those engaged in weaving, spinning, knitting and the manufacture of garments and made-up textile goods, accounted for a total of 177,258 and remained the largest section