ENG-2005 — Page 88

58 1 The Economy

Chart 11

-1

Per cent

5

4

Total labour force and total employment (year-on-year rate of change)

3

Total

labour force

2

1

0

Total employment

-2

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

Total employment continued to grow at a faster pace than the labour supply in 2005.

Within the corporate sector, the main impetus to employment growth continued to come from the service sectors, with an increase of 3.3 per cent in 2005. This outweighed the decreases of 2 per cent recorded for the local manufacturing sector and 10.6 per cent for the building and construction sites. While employment gains were observed extensively across many major service sectors, the increases were more apparent in finance, insurance, real estate and business services, community, social and personal services and import/export trades.

Job vacancies in the private sector, another indicator of labour demand, exhibited double-digit growth throughout 2005, rising by 26 per cent for the year as a whole. A sizable proportion of the vacancies were found in the lower segment of the labour market, mainly in such sectors as retail, import/export trades, restaurants and business services.

Amid the tightened labour market conditions, overall labour earnings began to increase again from the beginning of 2005, reversing the downward trend of the preceding three years. Labour earnings, as measured by payroll per person engaged in the private sector, rose by 3.5 per cent in money terms or 2.4 per cent in real terms in 2005 over a year earlier. There was a widespread increase in earnings among workers in the service sectors both in money and real terms, save for those engaged in community, social and personal services which were still subject to the spill-over from the pay cut of civil servants in January. Meanwhile, the earnings of manufacturing workers edged up both in money and real terms.