(Policy Address 2025) Tighter foreign labour rules to protect local workers

Amid an aging population and a declining local labour force, Chief Executive John Lee announced a tightening of the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS) to combat abuse and ensure employment priority for local workers.

The new measures, effective immediately, introduce stricter requirements for employers seeking to import waiters, waitresses, and junior cooks. The mandatory local recruitment process will be extended from four to six weeks. Crucially, during this period, employers must now attend an on-site job fair organized by the Labour Department every single week to actively recruit local staff.

A significant change targets manning ratios. The requirement will now be calculated stringently based on the specific posts an employer is applying to fill with foreign labour, not on their total workforce.

This means an employer applying to import one waiter and one junior cook must have already employed two local full-time waiters and two local full-time junior cooks, effectively doubling the local hiring requirement for the roles they wish to fill from abroad.

To bolster these efforts with data-driven policy, the Labour and Welfare Bureau has begun a mid-term update of its Manpower Projection, focusing specifically on analysing industries with a high proportion of imported labour. This study is slated for completion in 2026.

Alongside reforms to the legal importation of workers, the government pledged to intensify the fight against illegal employment.

Efforts will include strengthening intelligence collection, establishing a dedicated hotline for reporting illegal workers, and organizing more inter-departmental joint enforcement operations to safeguard job opportunities for local residents.

In a parallel move supporting the local workforce, the government has agreed to adopt a new formula-based mechanism for the annual review of the Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW), as proposed by the Minimum Wage Commission. The first SMW rate determined under this new system is expected to take effect on May 1, 2026.