Hong Kong Graduates Bear the Brunt as AI Entry-Level Jobs Shrink

Hong Kong graduates are entering a tighter job market. Sixty-nine per cent of job sectors recorded their fewest vacancies in six years in 2025, and full-time vacancies suitable for university leavers have fallen 60 per cent since 2022, according to Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun. Speaking to the Legislative Council on May 13, Sun said the Joint Institutions Job Information System counted 80,000 graduate-level vacancies in 2022 and just 31,000 in 2025.

The pain is not spread evenly. Administration vacancies fell nearly 90 per cent over the same window, with information technology and programming roles down 80 per cent. Sun tied the contraction to a global survey by the International Data Corporation that found more than 60 per cent of companies worldwide plan to cut entry-level hiring inside three years because of AI.

The 60% Drop in Three Years

Hong Kong’s graduate labour market has compressed sharply inside three years. The Joint Institutions Job Information System, a job platform shared by the city’s eight publicly funded universities, recorded 80,000 full-time vacancies suitable for graduates in 2022. By 2025, that number had fallen to 31,000. Chris Sun, the city’s Secretary for Labour and Welfare, called the change “sweeping and global” in a reply to lawmaker questions on May 13, the same day Hong Kong Free Press reported the 60% drop in graduate vacancies since 2022.

Sun said entry-level jobs “vulnerable to automation” have been hit hardest. He drew on a global survey by the International Data Corporation that found more than 60 per cent of companies surveyed plan to reduce entry-level hiring inside three years because of AI. He promised a fuller Hong Kong analysis in the fourth quarter of 2026, folded into the mid-term Manpower Projections update. The Labour and Welfare Bureau will spend the months until then modelling the impact on individual industries. For now, the official line is that the graduate unemployment rate has not risen sharply, even as the door to first jobs has narrowed.

Where the Cuts Are Landing

The decline is not evenly spread across sectors. Data from the Joint Institution Job Information System shows IT and programming vacancies fell from 8,251 in 2020 to 2,749 in 2025, a 66.7 per cent drop. Customer service roles in retail, hotels and tourism fell from 3,763 to 1,720 over the same five-year window, a 54.3 per cent slide. The sectors hit hardest are the ones where generative AI has moved fastest into daily office work.

Michael Chau, professor of innovation and information management at HKU Business School, said the shift is partly about clerical work migrating into software. “Artificial intelligence can do more clerical work than before, and every industry always has some paperwork,” he said. He tied the fall in programming demand to AI’s ability to generate code quickly, noting the inversion: “AI was written by programmers, but now AI can write its own programmes.”

Customer service has been hollowed out by chatbot deployments. Alexa Chow Yee-ping, managing director of ACTS Consulting, said many basic customer questions now get standardised replies from AI tools, allowing companies to reserve staff for more complex inquiries. Junior analysts and bookkeepers, whose work is heavy on data crunching, face the same pattern.

The wider picture is that roles built on repeatable text-and-number tasks are shrinking fastest. The Joint Institution Job Information System recorded a 51.5 per cent drop in total vacancies from 2021, hitting a five-year low of 30,798 last year. That is happening at the same time the eight publicly funded universities produced 29,676 graduates in the 2024-25 academic year, nearly three-quarters of them undergraduates. Hong Kong’s economy has not added enough new openings to absorb that supply. Hiring has not kept pace with the new graduates coming through.

Source: Joint Institutions Job Information System, via Hong Kong Free Press and the South China Morning Post.

The Senior Productivity Boom

The flip side of the same AI wave is a productivity gain at the senior end of the workforce. A Goldman Sachs Research note from March 2023 estimated that generative AI could expose 300 million full-time jobs to automation globally, in work by Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani. The bank did not predict those jobs would vanish; it argued the work could be redistributed.

The International Monetary Fund’s January 2024 analysis put the global exposure even higher in proportion. Almost 40 per cent of global employment is exposed to AI, the IMF blog post said, with about 60 per cent of jobs in advanced economies facing some AI impact. Hong Kong’s services-heavy economy maps closely onto the sectors losing the most graduate vacancies.

The big beneficiary is the experienced worker who can plug AI into a workflow. Carl Benedikt Frey, the future-of-work director at the Oxford Martin School, told the BBC in 2023 that ChatGPT could let “more people with average writing skills” produce essays and articles, a shift he said would compress pay in knowledge work while leaving overall roles intact. In Hong Kong, that compression shows up as fewer openings. The same trade is playing out in US tech: Big Tech’s $700B AI spend and 142,000 jobs cut at the entry level while AI-skilled staff command a 56 per cent wage premium.

Where AI Stops

The drop in vacancies is not a story of total displacement. AI cannot yet replace the parts of office work built on human judgment and relationships. Many office tasks are repeatable, but the parts of work that involve negotiating, persuading or reading people are not. That gap is what gives graduates a way to stay relevant if they claim it.

When it comes to the management style, workplace culture or even the boss’s personality … we have to rely on people to make decisions.

That quote comes from Alexa Chow Yee-ping, managing director of ACTS Consulting, in an interview with the South China Morning Post. Chau, at HKU, said the answer is to keep learning how to use AI and pointed to new roles the shift is creating. He cited cybersecurity as a job category that did not exist before the internet era, drawing a parallel to roles that may emerge as AI matures.

What the Industry Is Saying

The official line from Hong Kong’s government is to acknowledge the shock and promise more analysis. “We all know the impact of AI is sweeping and global. We are all exploring how to help young people find jobs in a world changed by AI,” Sun told the Legislative Council on May 13, 2026. He said the Labour and Welfare Bureau will publish a fuller impact study in the fourth quarter of 2026, and the report will be folded into the mid-term Manpower Projections update.

Between 2025 and 2028, the eight University Grants Committee-funded universities will introduce 30 new academic programmes covering AI, cybersecurity and the creative industries. The Employees Retraining Board will be rebranded as Upskill Hong Kong later this year, with a focus on skills-based training that includes AI applications. Felix Yip, associate director at Baptist University’s Centre for Human Resources Strategy and Development, said the broader political and economic environment is also weighing on hiring, and urged students to seek overseas exchanges that AI cannot replace. On a separate radio programme, lawmaker Lam Chun-sing floated restrictions that would force employers to prioritise local graduates over non-local talent, framing the move as protection for Hong Kong graduates facing structural unemployment.

Industry voices echo that view. Chow said AI is good at speed but weak at the judgment calls businesses still rely on people for. Chau said the professions most insulated from AI, including medicine and teaching, are those where AI handles background work while humans handle the human parts. The gap is widest in jobs built on reading people and navigating workplace dynamics.

What Graduates and Schools Are Doing

For graduates, the gap between what a CV says and what an AI can do has narrowed fast. Portfolios and internships now carry more weight than degree classifications, hiring managers and university careers services told local media. Employers want evidence that a new hire can use AI tools and then check the output. Without that, the door to a first job is harder to open.

A short list of moves that students and graduates in Hong Kong are making has begun to circulate among careers advisors. Some of these moves match what employers are asking for. Others are bets that AI will not touch them.

• Build a portfolio. Project work, freelance briefs, and internship output now weigh more than grades alone.
• Pick AI-aware courses. Look for programmes that teach prompt use, output verification and tool limits, not just theory.
• Pick up a domain specialism. Sectors with judgment at their core, such as nursing, teaching and counselling, are more resilient.
• Go on overseas exchanges. Baptist University’s Felix Yip said such experiences cannot be replaced by AI.
• Verify, then publish. Treat AI drafts as a starting point. Chow said humans still own the final call on tone, risk and context.

Sun’s package also includes a government-led push. The Upskill Hong Kong rebranding of the Employees Retraining Board is meant to move the conversation from protection to retraining. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has pushed for “extensive and deep integration of AI” across government departments. Finance chief Paul Chan, in his February budget, announced he would chair a new “AI+ and Industry Development Strategy” committee and provide “AI training for all” across education and vocational pathways.

Graduates can use those programmes. They cannot rely on them.

Hong Kong’s eight publicly funded universities produced 29,676 graduates in 2024-25, and the class ahead will be no smaller. The market has tilted against them at the entry level. Apprenticeships and short industry projects will carry more weight than ever. New academic programmes will not hit the labour market until 2028 at the earliest. Until then, the entry-level squeeze is what graduates have to work around.

Beyond Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s squeeze on entry-level hiring sits inside a wider pattern. The IMF expects advanced economies to face more AI exposure than emerging markets, partly because cognitive, office-based tasks dominate their labour markets. The Goldman Sachs note pointed to two task categories as most exposed: 46 per cent of administrative tasks and 44 per cent of legal tasks could be automated, the bank estimated. Construction (6 per cent) and maintenance (4 per cent) sit near the floor.

Hong Kong’s data matches that picture. The jobs that shrank fastest between 2020 and 2025 are the ones inside those high-exposure task groups. The implication for graduates is a narrower on-ramp to a career.

The same pressure is showing up in US tech and finance payrolls. Finance payrolls down 28,000 a month in 2026 sit alongside AI-related job creation in data centres, a split that mirrors what the Hong Kong data shows at the city level. Hong Kong’s entry-level compression is one early, well-documented version of a global labour-market story. The structural shift has begun, and the labour market data is just starting to show it. For graduates, the next few years will look different from anything the last class saw.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are AI entry-level jobs?

AI entry-level jobs is shorthand for the first job a graduate takes, the routine work that has historically trained new hires into a profession. In Hong Kong, that work has included basic data entry, junior analyst reports, customer service replies and first-draft legal or marketing copy. Generative AI can now produce credible first versions of all of these tasks. The phrase covers the roles most exposed to that shift, not the entire graduate labour market.

Why are Hong Kong graduates worried?

Full-time graduate vacancies in Hong Kong fell from 80,000 in 2022 to 31,000 in 2025, a 60 per cent drop tracked by the Joint Institutions Job Information System. Labour and Welfare Secretary Chris Sun attributed the shift to AI’s spread into office work. Sun also cited an International Data Corporation survey that found more than 60 per cent of companies worldwide expect to cut entry-level hiring inside three years because of AI. The supply of graduates has not fallen; the openings have.

Which jobs are hit hardest?

Administration vacancies fell nearly 90 per cent between 2022 and 2025, and IT and programming roles fell 80 per cent, Sun told the Legislative Council. Looking at full-sector data over five years, IT and programming roles dropped 66.7 per cent from 8,251 vacancies in 2020 to 2,749 in 2025. Customer service roles in retail, hotels and tourism fell 54.3 per cent from 3,763 to 1,720 over the same period.

What can graduates do?

Hiring managers and consultants interviewed by local media point to five levers: building a project portfolio, choosing courses that teach AI use alongside theory, pursuing domain specialisms that depend on human judgment such as nursing, teaching or counselling, going on overseas exchanges that AI cannot replace, and treating AI drafts as starting points that need human verification. Hong Kong’s Upskill Hong Kong programme, a rebranding of the Employees Retraining Board, is also adding AI-application training.

Is Hong Kong alone?

No. Hong Kong is one of several advanced economies where AI exposure shows up at the bottom of the labour market first. The IMF’s January 2024 analysis put 40 per cent of global employment in AI-exposed roles, with 60 per cent of jobs in advanced economies facing some AI impact. Goldman Sachs estimated in March 2023 that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation. The same compression of white-collar entry-level hiring is reported in London, Singapore and New York.