XN000022-1997-04-23 — Page 84

67 -

Unemployment and underemployment

Following is a question by the Hon Lee Cheuk-yan, and a written reply by the Secretary for Financial Services, Mr Rafael Hui, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):

Question:

Reply:

Will the Government inform this Council of:

(a)

(b)

(a)

the respective quarterly unemployment rates and underemployment rates in each of the three-digit major industry groups classified according to the Hong Kong Standard Industrial Classification over the past two years; and

the reasons for the high unemployment rate in the three industry groups which had the highest unemployment rate last year?

Statistics on the quarterly unemployment rates and underemployment rates by major two-digit industry group for the past two years are given in Tables 1 and 2. Further breakdowns by three-digit industry group are however not available, as estimates for such detailed breakdowns are subject to relatively large sampling errors. Estimates for unemployment and underemployment rates for industries which account for only a very small share in total employment are also not available, in view of the relatively large sampling errors against a small sample size.

(b)

In 1996, storage, decoration and maintenance, and clothing and footwear were the three sub-sectors which recorded relatively higher unemployment rates than the others.

The estimates for unemployment rate in the storage sub-sector tend to exhibit great volatilities. It rose from 0% in the first and second quarters of 1995 to around 7% in the second quarter of 1996, falling to around 4% in the third quarter before rising to around 8% in the fourth quarter of 1996. Despite these volatilities, the numbers unemployed in this sub- sector remained at a low level of around 300 or below throughout the past two years, representing less than 0.5% of the total numbers nemployed. It is thus reckoned that the erratic movements in these unemployment rate estimates for the storage sub-sector are very likely to have been caused by sampling errors.