Hong Kong wage growth slows from 3.5% to 2.5% in line with Greater Bay Area trend

Wage growth in Hong Kong has slowed from 3.5 per cent in 2024 to 2.5 per cent this year, mirroring a cooling trend across the Greater Bay Area, with salaries declining significantly after the United States launched a trade war in April, according to a survey.

The 2025 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area Pay and Benefits Survey, released on Thursday, also found the impact of the emigration-led brain drain on the city’s workforce had eased for the first time since 2018.

“The impact of geopolitics and the trade war is strong,” said Professor Huang Xu, director of the Centre for Human Resources Strategy and Development at Baptist University’s school of business.

“We discovered that the salaries on job advertisements across different industries were significantly lower after the trade war started on ‘Liberation Day’ on April 2,” Huang said.

US President Donald Trump announced global tariffs on April 2, an occasion he called ‘Liberation Day’.

Huang said the conclusion was based on analysis using a new artificial intelligence platform that compared nine months of data from 2,000 Hong Kong firms collected ahead of the US tariff blitz in April, with data from 200 firms collected after Washington launched its trade war.