CityLab Daily: Hong Kong Covid Zero Push Creates a Labor Shortage
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Domestic helpers gather during a rest day at Victoria Park in Hong Kong.
Photographer: Lam Yik/BloombergHong Kong’s Covid Zero policy has led to a shortage of foreign domestic helpers. A group of mostly Filipina and Indonesian women provide live-in child care, cooking and cleaning to 10% of households, and serve as the silent core of the city’s $345 billion economy. Before the pandemic, there were 400,000 helpers in Hong Kong, but enforcement of some of the world’s harshest Covid containment measures has shrunk their population by about 12.5%.
Even as market conditions shift in favor of Hong Kong’s remaining migrant helpers, the city’s laws effectively give employers most of the bargaining power. Asking for higher wages could cost helpers their job, while prematurely ending their two-year contracts with employers to pursue more lucrative opportunities risks drawing scrutiny from authorities. “The Hong Kong government is promoting modern-day slavery,” Eni Lestari of the International Migrants Alliance told reporter Yazhou Sun. Today on CityLab: Hong Kong Faces Domestic Worker Shortage in Push for Covid Zero
-Maxwell Adler