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Wage indices
Following is a question by the Hon Chan Wing-chan, and a written reply by the Secretary for Financial Services, Mr Rafael Hui, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Question:
According to Government statistics in recent years, the rate of increase in the average earnings of employees has been higher than the rate of wage increase, which indicates that employees in some industries have to rely on overtime pay and irregular earnings to increase their income. In this connection, will the Government provide the information relating to items (a) to (c) below, in regard to the past three years:
(a)
a breakdown by industry and occupation of-
(i)
the respective rates of change in the average nominal and real earnings as well as in the wages of local employees;
(ii)
the respective proportions of overtime pay and irregular earnings to the average nominal earnings;
(iii)
the respective proportions of overtime pay and irregular eamings to the average real earnings;
(b)
(c)
the major industries and occupations in which employees receive overtime pay more frequently, and the respective numbers of normal and overtime working hours of the employees concerned;
the major industries and occupations in which employees receive irregular earnings more frequently, and the main forms of payment for such earnings;
if not, what the reasons are; and whether the Government will consider collecting such information and publishing on a regular basis?
Reply:
(a)(i)
The Census and Statistics Department publishes, on a half-yearly basis, the wage indices, and on a quarterly basis, the payroll indices, for selected industry groups. The wage indices for individual major industry groups are further broken down by broad occupational categories up to the supervisory level.