XN000022-1972-05-04 — Page 10

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Thursday, May 4, 1972

QUARTERLY SURVEY SHOWS

More Factories, Fewer Workers

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The Commissioner of Labour, Mr. Paul Tsui, announced to-day

that the quarterly survey conducted by his department in March this

year shows that compared with the previous quarter, registered and

recorded industrial undertakings have increased by 72 to 19,474.

However, the number of employees has decreased by 6,812 to

598,555. The main decreases were 4,887 in wigs, 3,481 in cotton spinning

and weaving, 1,151 in woollen knitting and 1,130 in ship building and

repairing.

Employment in garments continued to expand and showed an increase

of 2,719. The manufacture of plastic flowers also recorded a rise of

1,032 employees.

The three largest industries, from an employment point of view,

remained the manufacture of textiles and textile made-up goods with

257,245 employees, the plastics industry with 69,406 employees, and the

manufacture of electrical machinery, apparatus, appliances, and supplies

with 52,090 employees.

In the same survey conducted on a voluntary basis, 21,159 vacancies

were reported over a wide range of industries, an increase of 3,600 over

the previous quarter's figure. The largest number of vacancies occured in:

Industry

electronics

Number of Reported Vacancies

4,991

garments

4,522

plastics

2,885

metal products.

1,508

cotton spinning and weaving

1,146

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