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Employment

The Work Orientation and Placement Scheme improves employment opportunities for people with disabilities by paying employers an allowance to encourage them to provide jobs and employment support. A participating employer who hires a person with disabilities having employment difficulties is entitled to an allowance of up to $51,000 over the nine-month on- the-job training period. In 2019, the scheme made 942 job placements.

Continuing Education Fund

The fund provides adults with subsidies for continuing learning. A series of enhancement measures were implemented from April. About 19,200 reimbursement claims were approved and subsidies totalling about $153 million were paid out in the year.

Youth Employment and Training Programme

School leavers aged between 15 and 24 with up to sub-degree education may choose from a full range of pre-employment and on-the-job training. This programme is an effective platform for government departments, employers and non-governmental organisations to work together to help young people enhance their employability, improve job search skills and secure employment. Participating employers who engage eligible young people and provide them with on-the-job training may get a training allowance of up to $4,000 per month per employee for six to 12 months. In 2018-19, 4,572 school leavers enrolled on the programme.

Youth Employment Support

People aged between 15 and 29 may make use of one-stop advisory and support services at two youth employment resource centres called Youth Employment Start, which are operated by the department to improve their chances of employment and help secure their sustainable employment or self-employment. In 2019, services were provided to young people by the two centres 70,305 times.

Working Holiday Scheme

Hong Kong has bilateral working holiday arrangements with 13 economies: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The scheme enables Hong Kong youths aged 18 to 30 to broaden their horizons by experiencing foreign culture through living and working temporarily overseas while holidaying, and allows youths from the partner economies to learn about Hong Kong.

The UK allows Hong Kong youths to stay for up to 24 months. The remaining 12 partner economies issue working holiday visas to Hong Kong youths to stay for up to 12 months for holidaying, short-term employment to support their travel expenses and, except for Ireland, short-term courses.

As at end-2019, the scheme had recorded about 96,000 Hong Kong youth participants and welcomed about 14,000 youths from the partner economies to Hong Kong.

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