These things mean very little to working-class families like me
As Hong Kong marks nearly three decades since its return to Chinese rule, the city's gleaming macroeconomic indicators tell only half a story — the half written in boardrooms and trading floors. For the restaurant worker in Tsuen Wan and the small business owner in North Point, prosperity is not an abstraction to celebrate but a distance to measure. When a society's growth cannot be felt by those who most need to feel it, the question of who an economy is truly built for becomes impossible to defer.
- Food and retail sectors are reporting conditions worse than the pandemic years, signaling a structural deterioration that cannot be dismissed as temporary turbulence.
- Low-wage workers like sixty-year-old restaurant employee Molly Lam survive on roughly HK$12,000 a month in one of the world's most expensive cities, with no margin for error and no ladder to climb.
- The government's strategic pivot toward high-end technology and capital attraction leaves workers in contracting industries without retraining pathways or meaningful safety nets.
- Headline unemployment figures and stock market gains create a narrative of recovery that actively obscures the widening distance between macro prosperity and household financial reality.
- Unless policymakers bridge the gap between transformation strategy and ground-level support, the city risks producing a recovery that a significant portion of its population experiences only as abandonment.
Hong Kong's economy, by most official measures, is recovering. The stock market is strong, unemployment is stable, and growth is returning. But the view from a public housing flat in Tsuen Wan or a small restaurant in North Point tells a different story entirely.
Molly Lam is sixty, works in a restaurant, and lives alone on HK$12,000 a month — enough to survive, not enough to build. Her employer is contracting, her industry is shrinking, and when economists speak of turnaround and transformation, she feels nothing. The government's investment in high-end technology sectors offers no foothold for someone with her skills and no cushion if things collapse beneath her.
Across the harbor, Celeste Yeung co-founded a Chinese pastry restaurant in North Point and is watching her sector deteriorate in ways that feel more permanent than anything the pandemic years produced. Three years of lockdowns were survivable. What is happening now feels structural.
This is the central contradiction of Hong Kong's current moment: the prosperity is real, and so is the pain, and they occupy the same city without ever quite touching. As Hong Kong marks twenty-nine years since its handover, the Northern Metropolis project and the push for high-end capital and talent represent serious bets on the future — but bets that assume the gains will eventually reach everyone. For workers in shrinking industries and small business owners watching their livelihoods contract, that assumption is beginning to feel like something only the comfortable can afford to make.
The gap between what the economy looks like on paper and what it feels like on the ground is not a rounding error. It is a chasm. And the question pressing against the city's optimistic narrative is whether those in power will act before the people living at the bottom of that chasm conclude the recovery was never meant to include them.
Hong Kong's economy is humming. The stock market is robust. Unemployment sits at a stable level. Growth is turning around. Walk through the financial district and you will hear talk of success, of transformation, of a city finding its footing again after years of turbulence. But step into a public housing flat in Tsuen Wan, or a small restaurant in North Point, and the story changes entirely.
Molly Lam is sixty and works in a restaurant. She lives alone in a public housing unit and has learned to live on HK$12,000 a month—about US$1,540. That is enough to pay her bills, to eat, to survive. It is not enough to build anything. Her employer is contracting. The industry is shrinking. She watches her job the way someone watches a rope fray, knowing it could snap at any moment. When she hears economists talk about the stock market, about unemployment rates holding steady, about economic turnaround, she feels nothing. "These things mean very little to working-class families like me," she said. The government, she noted, is pouring resources into high-end technology sectors, industries that demand skills she does not have and offer no cushion for people like her if things go wrong.
Across the harbor, Celeste Yeung is fighting a different battle but facing the same wall. She is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Time To Gold, a Chinese pastry restaurant in North Point. The food and retail sectors, she says, are in worse shape now than they were during the pandemic years that began in 2020. Three years of lockdowns, supply chain chaos, and customer fear—and yet conditions have deteriorated further since then. The problems are different now, more structural, harder to name as temporary.
This is the contradiction at the heart of Hong Kong's current moment. The headline numbers are good. Experts and industry leaders point to them with confidence: the stock market is thriving, macroeconomic indicators are robust, the fundamentals look sound. But those numbers describe a city that is not the same city where Molly Lam worries about her next paycheck or where Celeste Yeung watches her sector contract month after month. The prosperity is real. The pain is also real. They exist in the same place, at the same time, and almost never touch.
The city is marking twenty-nine years since its return to Chinese rule, and with that milestone comes a reckoning about what the economic transformation strategy has actually delivered. The Northern Metropolis project, the push into high-end technology, the focus on attracting capital and talent—these are serious bets on the future. But they are bets that assume the future will include everyone, or at least that the gains will eventually trickle down. For workers in contracting industries, for small business owners watching their sectors shrink, for people earning modest wages in a city with some of the world's highest living costs, that assumption feels increasingly like a luxury they cannot afford.
The gap between what the economy looks like on paper and what it feels like on the ground is not a minor discrepancy. It is a chasm. And it is widening. The question now is whether policymakers will notice, and whether they will act before the people living in that chasm decide the recovery is not meant for them.
Notable Quotes
The administration focuses heavily on high-end IT industries, which offer no safety net for low-skilled labourers like me.— Molly Lam, restaurant worker
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the stock market doing well not help someone like Molly Lam?
Because she doesn't own stocks. She owns nothing that appreciates. She owns a job that's disappearing, and a flat she rents from the government. The gains are happening in a different economy than the one she lives in.
But doesn't economic growth eventually create jobs?
It does—but not in restaurants. Not in retail. Not in the sectors where people without advanced degrees can work. The growth is happening in high-end tech, finance, sectors that require credentials and connections most working-class people don't have.
So the government should be investing in training programs?
Maybe. But Molly is sixty. Celeste is watching her entire sector contract. Training takes time, and they don't have the luxury of time. They need stability now.
Is this unique to Hong Kong?
No. But Hong Kong is expensive. A HK$12,000 salary in a cheaper city might be livable. Here it's barely survival. And the government is betting on sectors that won't employ people like her at all.
What happens if nothing changes?
The people who can leave will leave. The people who can't will stay and get poorer, relatively speaking. And the social fabric gets thinner.