A business culture of guaranteed pay rises and the assumed annual promotion seems to be well and truly over – at least for now. 

Hong Kong’s business culture in the finance sector has many peculiarities when you come from abroad and first start working in the city.

In wealth management, clients have an unfamiliar propensity to trade stocks as if their private bank were also a personal fiefdom-cum-brokerage.

Spelling it Out

Most mornings, after barely a grunt for a greeting, clients would go and fast dial their trusted relationship manager assistant and spell out the four numbers of established - or less established - Hong Kong-listed stocks in rapid succession, specifying prices, lots, and expected bids and asks.

The whole thing would sweetened up by a good ladling of leverage to keep things nice and liquid in the background, along with additional helpings of those utterly and completely unfamiliar beasts called accumulators and decumulators.

Unique Job Market

The job market also had its unique idiosyncrasies for the fledgling expat. In the good years before the pandemic, they might be in the job for like a year and a half before they find themself as the oldest and most experienced employee in their team - maybe even the whole floor of the skyscraper they find themselves parked in.

Fluctuation rates at banks could be horrendous, with 20 percent annual movements in and out seen as a good figure, and a 40 percent rate, or almost half, regarded as maybe not great – but completely normal.

Increment-mania

When eating lunch with colleagues, they would hear talk in a mixture of Cantonese and English about what kind of increment (or pay increase) the local, streetwise employee needed to get, along with the assumed, expected promotion, just to stay in place at that specific bank for another 365 days.

They would often get asked how many times they were promoted in their home country and what kind of pay rise they would get, with the local banker dumbfounded at the answers, i.e. rarely for the former and barely for the latter.

Different Era

Now it seems the job market in Hong Kong is beginning to take on the characteristics of those other job markets they once sneered at, at least according to a media release sent out on Tuesday by international recruitment agency Robert Walters.

«The job market has become more employer-driven, with employers holding more leverage due to limited opportunities,» the recruiter indicates.

No More Coddling

That sentence by itself is a watershed, an inflection point, a paradigm change, or whatever you want to call it - for the average coddled Hong Kong banking employee. 

But it doesn’t end there. A survey undertaken by the agency reveals that only 55 percent of employers expect to increase pay for staff in 2025, a figure that is not only 9 percent lower than last year but a brutal teardown of the days when 20 or even 30 percent was regarded as commonplace.

Measly Pay Rises

Moreover, the minority of employers who are going to give a pay rise is expected to eke out a measly 1-5 percent increase, something that is clearly not worth any bragging rights to anyone at the average work lunch.

That kind of environment is forcing employees to stay put, with Robert Walter’s survey indicating that a quarter of staff based in Hong Kong do not plan to change jobs next year, a figure that is up 13 percent from last year’s.

Hope Reigns Eternal

Still, many are not giving up on the possibility of getting a 10 percent pay rise if they do move although they are going to have to face up to the brick wall of a fact that only 33 percent of employers are going to meet their expectations.

«After two and a half years of a slowdown, especially in the financial services sector, we might be turning a corner. The Hang Seng Index is up 15% for the year, and there has been an increase in IPO activity over the last few months,» says John Mullally, managing director at Robert Walters Hong Kong.

More Employees, More Contractors

Given that, about 15 percent of employers are seen increasing their permanent headcount in 2025 while 18 percent plan to up the number of contractors.

But the truth of the matter, beyond the figures, may simply be that the Hong Kong job market is becoming, well, kind of normal.