'No choice': HK's fresh grads grapple with lower starting pay

Wage growth slows with blame falling on geopolitics, especially US-China trade war

- Magdalene Fung Hong Kong Correspondent

Fresh graduate Shane Lau’s entry into the working world is not turning out quite as smooth as he hoped.

As he grew more desperate after nine months of job hunting, he thought things were finally looking up when he landed a role as a sales executive at a local design firm and started work in early October.

But Mr Lau, 23, who graduated in May with a local bachelor’s degree in marketing, is already being plagued by doubts about his career prospects barely a month in.

“By Hong Kong standards, I think my starting pay of HK$17,000 (S$2,840) a month is quite low,” he told The Straits Times. “I accepted it as it’s been so hard to get any job offer at all. But now I’m worried that my low starting base will hurt my future earnings.”

Starting salaries for Hong Kong’s fresh graduates have dropped for the first time since 2018 as wage growth slowed across the Greater Bay Area (GBA), according to the latest pay and benefits study released by the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) on Oct 23.

The average starting pay for a fresh graduate with a bachelor’s degree fell to HK$19,500 in 2025, compared with HK$19,806 a year earlier.

This ended a six-year run of increases, during which starting salaries for new graduates rose between 27 per cent and 47 per cent across academic disciplines from 2018 to 2024.

Comparatively, the median pay in Singapore for fresh graduates in 2024 was $4,500 for those from the city’s autonomous universities and $3,500 for those from private universities, ST reported this year.

In Japan, the figure was reportedly between 230,000 yen (S$1,960) and 240,000 yen, and in Taiwan, it was NT$36,000 (S$1,520).

Three days after the HKBU findings were released, Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak dismissed concerns that young people are losing hope in the city amid waning opportunities.