Hong Kong salaries up by an average of 3.9%

Only 3 in 5 workers got a wage hike.

According to a new survey by the leading career portal, jobsDB, Hong Kong salaries are up by an average of 3.9% in 2017.

However, while IT, real estate and property management professionals are seeing the highest increases, the latest Job Seeker Salary Report reveals that, for the majority of people, landing a new job is still one of the best ways to increase their earnings.

Although the average salary increase in 2017 is slightly higher than last year’s 3.6%, it is still significantly lower than the 4.7% that people saw in 2015, and quite a lot less than the 5.9% recorded in 2014.

Here's more from jobsDB:

“The Hong Kong Government is forecasting modest economic growth of 2-3% in 2017; accordingly, the market is seeing a slight increase in pay rises this year. As for the performance in the next quarter, it will depend on global economic activity in the second half of the year,” said Justin Yiu, General Manager of Jobs DB Hong Kong Limited.

In general, the average salary increase across the market appears to be slight. Only 61% of currently employed respondents received a pay rise this year – a bit higher than last year’s 60%. More than half of those in the professions of manufacturing, design, media and advertising had no increase at all. In fact, 2% of the people surveyed actually received a pay cut, although that was half as many as in 2016.

Among all job functions, hospitality/F&B received the lowest average salary increment of only 2.4%. However, the picture in the professions of property and IT is very different. Real estate, property management and IT personnel enjoyed the highest average rise of 5.3%, and programmers and analyst programmers got even more, winning 8.1% and 8.4% respectively.

On the bonus front, the average in 2017 was 1.5 times the basic monthly wage, which represents an increase on the 1.2 months in 2016. But, that is still less than the average 1.7 months of salary bonus awarded in 2015.