More than half of Hong Kong companies have found it harder to hire talent in the past 12 months than at any point in the last five years, reports the South China Morning Post, citing research from recruitment platform JobsDB, a subsidiary of Australian job board Seek. JobsDB’s Hong Kong managing director Bill Lee said a skills and talent mismatch was the ‘cause’ of the city’s labour shortage, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic had reshaped requirements for workers.

“All sectors are undergoing reorientation, thus drastically transforming their demand for different skill sets, with available labour however not yet able to catch up with the change as companies take time and resources for such internal training and upskilling, expectedly sustaining a prolonged talent mismatch,” Lee said. Meanwhile, respondents attributed the labour shortage to raised expectations for salary and benefits, difficulties in recruiting talent and challenges in hiring experienced staff. At the same time, 38% of the employers also said they believed that more Hongkongers had been planning to emigrate, making hiring more difficult.