2
Employment
Of the one-and-a-half million people working in Hong Kong, 576,440 are in the manufacturing industries. This conclusion is reached from an estimate of figures recorded in the 1966 by-census. At that time, 1,454,730 persons were described as economically active' and 1,400,350 claimed to be working; of these, 55,350 were counted as employers and 136,300 were working on their account.
The general employment pattern in the 1966 by-census showed that about 47 per cent of the working population was engaged in construction, manufacturing, mining, quarrying and the utilities, about 24 per cent in various services, 17 per cent in commerce, seven per cent in communications and five per cent in agriculture, forestry and fishing. Based on this pattern, the estimated employ- ment figures at the end of (1967 were; manufacturing 576,440, services 352,690, commerce 243,960, construction 90,180, agricul- ture, forestry and fishing 76,370, communications 100,140, public utilities 14,290, mining and quarrying 4,390. There were also some 5,600 in other work, making an estimated total of 1,464,060 employed.
These figures give a broader picture than that available from actual statistics collected by the Labour Department, which are confined to voluntary returns from factories and industrial under- takings only. They do not include out-workers, people in cottage industries, the building construction industry, agriculture and fish- ing, or in unrecorded factories and undertakings. Neither do they include people employed in commerce and community and personal services. In 1967, voluntary returns showed that 443,972 people were directly employed in factories and industrial undertakings, an increase of 19,817 compared with the 1966 figure. Those engaged in weaving, spinning, knitting and the manufacture of garments and made-up textile goods, accounted for a total of 184,989 and remained the largest section of this labour force. The plastics