Structural Unemployment in Hong Kong

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. Introduction
Unemployment refers to people who are available for work but are not employed and have tried to seek for jobs during the previous four weeks. Unemployment can also be subdivided into classical unemployment, frictional unemployment, structural unemployment, cyclical unemployment, seasonal unemployment and long-term unemployment. Unemployment lowers the living standard and creates financial burden to the unemployed people. It also increases mental stress and lowering the self-esteem. In this report, recent structural unemployment situation of Hong Kong is first discussed, then government policies and their effectiveness are focused.

2. Topic Definition/ Justification
Structural unemployment represents a type of unemployment happens when industrial transformation takes place. Development or changes of policies and economic structure will also lead to structural unemployment. Unemployed people will need to enhance their skills or to further study, so that they can meet the hiring requirements. (Nallari, 2010)

Before 20th century, Hong Kong was a small village which depended on fishery. Then the manufacturing industry started to develop. During the 50s and 60s, it was the heyday of manufacturing industry (Carroll, 2013). As refugees came from mainland to escape from the civil war in China, the great increase of labor force fulfill this industry. Most of the factories manufactured wigs, plastic flowers, garments...etc., and most of them brought family business to here. The Hong Kong industry started shifting since 80s when the mainland started reform and opening up policy and capital and factories were moved to mainland. (HULU Culture , 2011)

Structural Unemployment occurred at this time. Today, there are lots of labo...

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