Hong Kong's jobless level hits record


Hong Kong's glittering Central district, its equivalent of Wall Street, belies a record number of people out of work

By Alex Frew McMillan

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Hong Kong's jobless rate hit a record high of 7.0 percent through March, the government reported.

The unemployment level, measured for the first three months of the year, rose from 6.8 percent for the last quarter of 2001.

There are now 239,000 registered unemployed people in Hong Kong. Both the rate and the number of people out of work are unprecedented.

Officials also warned that worse might be ahead. "On current indications, the unemployment rate [is] likely to remain high in the near term," a government spokesman said in releasing the data on Thursday.

Jobless rate easier to track

The 7.0 percent rate already gives Hong Kong, technically a special administrative region of China, one of the highest official rates of joblessness in Asia.

Though some older Hong Kong residents may not register because they do not want government assistance, statisticians say it is relatively easy to measure the jobless rate in developed cities such as Hong Kong.

It is hard to measure the jobless rate in developing countries such as neighboring China, where categorizing and tracking subsistence farmers is difficult.

Hong Kong also measures underemployment, which remains steady at 3.2 percent. The total labor force in the city, which gets a hefty dose of its economic might from services such as shipping, banking, legal work and tourism, increased to 3.46 million.

But while the work force is still growing, the total number of working people fell 0.2 percent to 3.22 million.