ENG-1960 — Page 67

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Employment

OCCUPATIONS

No comprehensive statistics are collected by the Government of the numbers of people in various occupations, except of those in the civil service and those in industrial undertakings which are registered or recorded by the Labour Department. It is not there- fore certain how many people depend on each kind of commercial activity for their livelihood, but about 400,000 are engaged in agriculture and fishing and about 160,000 in building and engi- neering construction; it is known that 230,000 are employed by industry and 46,600 by the Hong Kong Government.

The demand for additional industrial labour was not as great in 1960 as in the previous year, and the increase was only 17,000, compared with 40,000 in 1959. There was a marked drop in employment in the garment industries in the middle of the year. Some workers were absorbed by the cotton industry which_com- pleted the process begun in the previous year of changing over to a daily system of three shifts of eight hours.

62,000 workers are employed in the manufacture of textiles which remains the main source of industrial employment, most being engaged in cotton spinning or weaving. The manufacture of wearing apparel employs 46,000 workers. Together, these two industries use 46% of the total industrial labour force. Other important industries include the manufacture of metalware, with 27,500 workers, and the manufacture and repair of transport equipment (including ship building, repairing, and breaking), which has 15,500 workers. The labour force of the plastic industry continued to grow in 1960.

In spite of the difficulties which faced industrialists in finding suitable premises the number of registered or recorded industrial undertakings went up by 576 to 5,599. Work continued on the reclamation at Kwun Tong to provide sites for industry, and