Will Hong Kong still need imported workers in ten years?
Ten years is long enough to remake a city. When a wave of technology meets an ageing population, what will Hong Kong's labour market actually look like?
Start with today. By the end of May 2025, Hong Kong's various imported-labour schemes had approved more than 70,000 quotas, of which the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS) accounted for roughly 50,000 workers. These imported workers staff front-line care, restaurant service and construction jobs that locals have largely stopped taking, and they have become a real pillar of the economy. The policy is contested all the same: between March and May 2025 unemployment climbed to 3.5 per cent, a two-year high, and voices are calling for the schemes to be reviewed or halted. So will Hong Kong still need this many imported workers in a decade?
Substitution by technology is the first force to weigh. Goldman Sachs has estimated that as many as 300 million full-time jobs worldwide could be displaced by artificial intelligence, and Hong Kong ranks among the five most exposed economies. By 2035 the scene is not hard to picture: AI ordering systems and delivery robots replacing some waiters and runners; smart construction machinery and prefabricated components cutting demand for building workers; monitoring devices and care robots helping residents through their day in care homes. Yet technology is not omnipotent. Lee Siu-po of the Chinese University of Hong Kong's business school put it plainly: AI and robots work without sleep and never ask for a raise — but government, he stressed, must set the rules of the game so the shock of this technological workforce is managed rather than left to land wherever it lands.
The second force is demographic and cannot be legislated away. The government's 2023 manpower projection expects the local workforce to fall short of what society needs by 2028, with the problem sharpening by 2035. Ageing cuts both ways: the supply of labour shrinks while the demand for care grows. Even where machines can take over part of the work, the appetite for human, personal services is likely to rise rather than fall. Elderly care is the textbook case — Chris Sun said as far back as 2022 that local workers alone could not possibly meet present and future demand.
Put the two forces together and a 2035 picture emerges. Heavily automated industries — manufacturing, logistics, food service and other repetitive work — will lean hard on automation and AI, and demand for low-skill imported labour there should fall sharply. Human-centred services such as nursing, childcare and counselling will still need people by the thousand, and those posts may continue to be filled from abroad. Meanwhile, new occupations that are hard to imagine today will demand high skills and sharpen the global contest for professional talent.
That leaves policy as the variable. Union voices have proposed a ladder-style exit mechanism that phases quotas down, industry by industry, whenever trading conditions or unemployment deteriorate. Others point to Singapore's adjustable quotas, flexed with actual supply and demand, and to benchmarking imported-worker pay against international market rates so the standard reflects reality.
Whatever the technology does, developing local people remains the foundation. The Hong Kong general manager of JobsDB argued that workers should upgrade their own capabilities rather than fear replacement by AI or robots, and that employers investing in technology should invest equally in retraining their staff. The decade ahead calls for stronger vocational education and on-the-job training so local workers can move up before the automation wave reaches them.
The honest conclusion is that Hong Kong in ten years will probably need fewer low-skill imported workers in bulk, but demand for highly skilled professionals and for people in specific service niches may hold or even grow. The task is balance: technological efficiency with human warmth, imported talent with local development, and planning by government, business and society together rather than separately. Ten years, after all, passes in a blink.
Plan for that decade now. For imported-labour applications, talent policy and retraining options, contact Labour Services Company Ltd — employment agency licence 81090 — for professional analysis and one-to-one advice that keeps your business ahead for the next ten years.