Working hour in Hong Kong

Do you know Hong Kong has no legislation on maximum and normal working hours?

…Damn it!! I got all irritated just from mentioning that!! Grrrrrrrrr……

According to the “Price and Earning” Study by UBS, Hong Kong ranked 71 out of 71 global cities on the length of average working hour per week, which is around 49-50.11 hours. For comparison, Paris people have it best, with only 30 hours or so.

While office hours in Hong Kong tend to be 9:00 – 18:00 (excluding 1 hour lunch break), that’s not true in most case, especially when you work in retail industry or work on shift. Not to mention lots of offices also open on Saturday (some half-day, some full-day)…

And did I mention anything about overtime work? While some decent companies will at least try to pay the employees for working overtime, some (or maybe even lots of, from what I’ve heard) companies won’t, claiming that “you have to work overtime because you are slow, and that is not the company’s responsibility to pay you”.

Yeah… some people really are shameless as long as they can save money. And of course you can look for another job; it’s just that no one can guarantee the next one would be better, especially when you consider that this is the problem of the whole society, not just one or two individual firms…

And this is how the “high competitiveness of Hongkongers” comes from.

Yeah, I am so proud of it…

Income in Hong Kong

Do you know that the average monthly salary in Hong Kong in 2016 is around HK$15000 (around US$1923)? Not bad, isn’t it?

Not really. It’s just a nominal income. When you have taken the inflation rate and the standard living cost, like rent and cost for food, into account, Hong Kong become one of the most expensive cities in the world.

According to a recent survey done by Mercer, Hong Kong is the second most expensive city among 207 urban centers in the world, “losing” only to an oil-rich city in Africa.

How expensive, you ask? Well, so expensive that even a 350 square foot flat in a remote area will cost you HK$10000 a month; eating in a working-class restaurant chain can cost you up to HK$45, and around HK$60 for dinner; and if you have to travel to work, be prepare to pay for at least HK$10 a day, or HK$20 if you have to travel further.

Let’s see, the minimum wage rate we have now is HK$32.5/hour…You don’t even need calculation to see that half of a Hongkonger’s daily income got drained before that day even ends. By the way, that HK$15000 up there is just a yard stick. Lots of people are earning less than HK$10000 a month.

You can even look up the increase in general price level over this decade to see how the price got doubled yet our salary rose by less than 50%.This results in something interesting: the higher our income, the lower our living standard…figuratively speaking.

Some international city Hong Kong is.