2
Employment
OF about one-and-a-half million people working in Hong Kong, 590,380 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 own
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 1968 were: manufacturing 590,380, services 361,220, commerce 249,860, construction 92,370, agricul- ture, forestry and fishing 78,220, communications 102,560, public utilities 14,640, mining and quarrying 4,500. There were also some 5,740 in other work, making an estimated total of 1,499,490 employed.
These figures give a broader picture than that available from actual statistics collected by the Labour Department, which are confined only to voluntary returns from factories and industrial undertakings. They do not include out-workers, people in home industries, the building construction industry, agriculture and fishing, or in unrecorded factories and undertakings. They do not include people employed in commerce and community and personal services. In 1968, voluntary returns showed that 506,753 people were directly employed in factories and industrial undertakings, an increase of 62,781 compared with the 1967 figure. Those engaged in weaving, spinning, knitting, and the manufacture of garments and made-up textile goods accounted for a total of 211,791 and remained the largest section of this labour force. The plastics