Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on construction industry: a
comparison between Hong Kong and Singapore
Jinying Xu1, Zhongze Yang2*, Weisheng Lu3, Fan Xue
This is the authors’ version of the paper:
Xu, J., Yang, Z., Lu, W., & Xue, F. (2021). Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on
construction industry: a comparison between Hong Kong and Singapore. Proceedings of
the 26th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and
Real Estate (CRIOCM2021), Springer, in press. Merit Paper Award.
This file is shared for personal and academic use only, under the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
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Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has great impacts on the whole world. Construction industry is no
exemption. However, to what extent has the pandemic influenced the construction industry has not been
fully investigated. This paper aims to quantitatively analyze such impacts in Hong Kong and Singapore,
which are two international cities high dependent on the global logistics and supply chain that is greatly
affected due to the pandemic. Macro statistical reports relating to the construction industry performance
and institutional arrangement to contain the impacts of the pandemic in general or industry-specific
manner were collected and analyzed. Indicators including construction industry GDP, construction site
number or contract award number, construction worker engagement, and job vacancy rate in the two cities
were compared on a year-on-year change basis. The analyses show that the Hong Kong construction
industry shows higher resilience during the pandemic as evidenced by milder changes and quicker
recovery while Singapore construction industry, due to the shutdown from April to June 2020, experienced
sharp decrease and slower recovery. The paper thus discussed the effects of different pandemic
development situation and institutional arrangements on the construction industry performance in the two
similar cities and gave some suggestions for the post-pandemic industry development.
Keywords: COVID-19; Construction industry; Performance; Hong Kong; Singapore.

Jinying Xu
Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
1

2* Zhongze Yang
Corresponding author, Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
E-mail: zhongze@hku.hk
3 Weisheng Lu

Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

4 Fan Xue

Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

1 Introduction
The COVID-19 was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 and hit all the nations around the globe
within four months [1]. Never before has nearly half of the world population experienced lockdown
situations, and never before have so many people and businesses been asked to change their ways of
working, producing, and consuming in sudden and dramatic manners [2]. The whole world is affected in an
unprecedented way by this long-lasting and wide-ranging pandemic. The real GDP growth of world was
estimated as -4.3% in 2020 [3]. The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index has dropped 14.3% in 2020
[4]
. The unemployment rate of Brazil, Italy, Canada, and the U.S. has increased to 13.4%, 11%, 9.7%, and
8.9%, respectively [4]. Many industries, such as civil aviation, hotel, tourism, and logistic and supply chain,
have been heavily damaged. The construction industry has not been exempted [5, 6]. For example, the total
construction output of the UK decreased by 12.5% in 2020 compared with 2019 [7]. For the US
construction industry, the real GDP in the second quarter of 2020 dropped 26.5% [8]. In Hong Kong,
construction workers infected by the COVID-19 are higher than other groups. By 4 February 2021, there
were total 268 registered construction workers infected and 3,162 quarantined [9].
Nevertheless, as Ogunnusi et al. [1] put it, despite the negative impacts, this pandemic also posed some
positive effects on the construction sector. Its effect has brought about innovative and diverse use of
technology in an exemplary manner which may change the course of construction even after the extinction
of COVID-19. In the UK, because of the government’s arrangements, the public construction sector is one
of the few industries that have been maintained (to some extent) in this pandemic [10]. Similarly,
observations imply that the Hong Kong construction industry has soon recovered from the impacts by the
social distancing measures, and resumed to normal. This is endorsed by the recent information release of
the Hong Kong Construction Industry Council (HKCIC). There were 103,000 workers working on
construction sites in December 2020 on a daily basis, a 5.2% increase than 2019 [9]. The industry’s quick
resilience is not easy, given the fact that Hong Kong’s construction is highly reliant on international
suppliers, which all have been much impacted by the pandemic. There must be something that we can
learn from construction industry to instigate a resilience in it or even other industries.
The fallout in the global economy caused by the pandemic is compelling governments to derive
policies for invigorating the economy [1]. One year after the COVID-19 epidemic, although it is still not
over, we have known better the institutional arrangements. These arrangements may include various social
distancing measures (e.g., work-from-home, gathering restrictions, and shutting down entertainment
venues), transportation lockdown, deployment of temperature testing devices, delivering free masks and
disinfectant, launching testing services, injecting relief fund, dispatching vaccines, and adopting stateof-the-art technologies. The digital technologies implementation in the service industries, which are
heavily hit by the pandemic, help to reduce the chances of the contagion of the COVID-19 [11]. The
construction industry has also gathered some positive experiences such as deployment of technological
tools, re-organization of work plans, planning ahead for unforeseen circumstances and inclusion of
contingency, storing bulk materials on-site, encouraging collaboration and risk assessment; workspace
management and design consideration; and increase off-site construction (i.e. prefabrication or modular
construction) [1].
This research tries to figure out how the construction industry was actually doing during the COVID19 pandemic. It will collect the statistical data to evaluate the performance of the construction industry.
Then it will comb the construction related institutional arrangements implemented in Hong Kong and
Singapore in a longitudinal way. Further, it will try to analyze the possible relation between these
institutional arrangements and the performance of the construction industry to generate some suggestions
for the new normal at the post-pandemic era. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: the next section
will review the existing research on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the construction industry.
Afterward, the data collection will be reported in Section 3. Data analyses, results, and findings of the
construction industry performance and the impacts of institutional arrangements will be reported in Section
4. Discussion and conclusion will be drawn in the last section.

2 COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the construction industry
The long-lasting, wide-ranging, and still on-going COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world
dramatically [1]. By March 4, 2021, the global confirmed cases are 114,853,685 and the total caused death
is 2,554,694. In Hong Kong, with a population of less than eight million, there are a total of 11056
confirmed cases and 201 deaths cause by COVID-19 by the same date. Behind these numbers, the life
routine of every individual is changed, so are the activities of every organization and the operations of

every industry. Among them, the civil aviation, hotel, tourism, logistic and supply chain industries are the
most heavily impacted. For example, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO),
COVID-19 has caused reduction of around 60% passengers (i.e. 2,699 million) and approximate loss of
371 billion dollars [12]. The monthly year-on-year change rates of passengers of Hong Kong International
Airport have maintained at around -98% since March 2020 [13].
The interconnectedness, complexity and global nature of the construction industry’s supply chains and
workforce affect the cost and schedule of construction projects during the COVID-19 pandemic [14].
Specifically, the UK construction sector GDP fell by a record 40.7% in April 2020 and all work fell by
12.5% in 2020 compared with 2019 [7]. It was estimated that about 6.7% of apprentices are possibly lose
jobs and construction industry projects a 26.7% decrease in agency workers and self-employed [1].
Similarly, in the U.S., the unemployment rate rocketed to a record 14.8% in April 2020 [6] and the annual
real GDP of 2020 decreased 3.5%, compared to an increase of 2.2% in 2019 [8]. Mainland China is the only
major economy that reported positive GDP growth in 2020, with a growth rate of 2.3% because the
COVID-19 was well-contained [15]. China’s construction sector GDP growth rate of 2020 is also positive
with 3.5% [16]. The situation in Hong Kong is not that optimistic with the annual real GDP of 2020
decreased 6.1% from 2019 while the gross domestic fixed capital formation of building and construction
decreased 7.3% in 2020 compared with 2019 [17].
Specifically, the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on construction industry are evidenced by various
aspects along the whole supply chain. The lockdown of factories, social distancing measures, and border
control arrangements lead to material delivery delays and shortage, delays in inspection and securing
permits, reduction in efficiency and productivity rates, suspension or slowing of ongoing projects and
delay in the starting date for new projects, price escalations, additional costs, loss of revenue, and payment
delays [6]. The expected impacts may also include safety concerns regarding virus spread in workplace,
increase in demand from local suppliers and manufacturers, and increase in disputes, litigation, and claims
[6]
. All these fundamental impacts challenge the traditional supply chain and working practices of the
construction industry and push it to change.
It is agreed that the whole world and the construction industry will not be the same when the
COVID-19 pandemic is over [1]. The ‘new normal’ where virtual environment, digital tools, artificial
intelligence, and robotics are being more and more integrated in construction works is an irreversible trend
catalyzed by the pandemic. For example, the social distancing measures facilitate the wide adoption of
virtual communication tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Tencent Conference. Building
information modelling (BIM) and digital work supervision system (DWSS) also encountered their chance
of widely promotion and adoption. Meanwhile, the government bodies in different countries or regions
release various institutional arrangements by trails to mitigate the negative effects and remedy the
downturn. However, whether these arrangements will generate positive effects is unsure even for policymakers and economists. This research will try to roughly evaluate the effectiveness of the institutional
arrangements by mapping them with the construction industry performance during the COVID-19
pandemic.

3 Data Collection
Hong Kong and Singapore are selected for the investigation because both are highly international cities
with high density in Asia. They share many similarities. Both cities are highly dependent on the global
supply and logistics which is heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, The COVID-19
pandemic development and contain measurements in the two cities are also quite different. For the
construction industry, they are both mature city with similar proportion of construction activities while
they are different that the Hong Kong construction industry is dependent on local manpower while
Singapore largely relies on migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and India. Therefore, it would be
interesting to compare the construction industry performance of the cities to see how COVID-19 impact
them differently.
To investigate the performance of construction industry, data that indicate its performance from
different dimensions, such as industry output and industry scale are desired. After browsing the data
released by government, it is found that the GDP data, construction site number or amount of construction
awarded contracts, number of construction manual workers, and industry job vacancy can be assessed. For
Hong Kong, total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), GDP of construction works, the number of construction
sites, the number of construction manual workers, and industrial job vacancy rate can be collected from the
Census and Statistics Department, the Building Department, and the Human Resources Planning and
Poverty Co-ordination Unit. The data are released on a quarterly basis. For Singapore, total Gross

Domestic Product (GDP), GDP of construction works, the amount of construction awarded contracts, the
number of construction manual workers, and industrial job vacancy rate can be gathered from the Building
and Construction Authority (BCA), Department of Statistics, and Ministry of Manpower. The construction
awarded contract number is released on month basis while other indicators are on quarterly basis. For the
data range, the data records from 2018 to 2020 are collected for comparison before and during the
pandemic. To ensure the comparison among different statistical calibers, the year-on-year change rate will
be calculated ensure comparisons between Hong Kong and Singapore. The construction industry policies,
regulations, measures in Hong Kong and Singapore are sourced from the HKCIC and the BCA,
respectively. By screening the news release and regulations on their official website, the policies and
regulations related to COVID-19 institutional arrangements are selected, recorded, and organized in a
chronological manner. All the above mentioned data are collected and reorganized to revert the whole
picture of the construction industry performance under COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft Excel 2016 was
used to process and analyze the data.

4 Data analyses and findings
To analyze how the construction industry is doing during the pandemic, this section will firstly investigate
the institutional arrangements construction industry taken along with the COVID-19 pandemic
development in Hong Kong and Singapore. Then, it will analyze the construction industry performance of
Hong Kong and Singapore from four dimensions, i.e. GDP, construction site number/awarded contracts,
construction worker engagement, and job vacancy rate.

4.1 Anti-pandemic institutional arrangements
Figure 1 presented the COVID-19 pandemic development in Hong Kong and Singapore. The pandemic has
been going on for more than a year in Hong Kong with three spikes showing up. Hong Kong experienced
the first spike in March 2020, the worse second for nearly two months from July 5, 2020, and an even
worse third spike sustaining for four months from November 23, 2020. Singapore’s performance in
containing the pandemic is extraordinary with the data curve remaining flat for months since October 2020.
The pandemic imposed great impacts on the construction industry of both Hong Kong and Singapore since
they are both highly dependent on the global logistics and supply chain which is severely hit during the
combat with the pandemic.
Both regions took measures in face of the pandemic. The anti-pandemic institutional arrangements to
combat the pandemic in both regions are also summarized according the timeline, see Figure 1. For the
construction industry, Singapore suspended construction works during the severe period from April 20 to
June 1, 2020 and gradually resume them until the outbreak was basically controlled. Afterward, different
types of measures, including fiscal support, rostered routine testing, innovation and digitalization technique
applications, were jointly taken until the pandemic was controlled and the construction works were
recovered to normal. The responses in Hong Kong construction industry were different. Most of the
construction works in Hong Kong kept going under permitted conditions if no outbreak took place at the
construction site. There was no construction site shutting down at large scale. The major measures were
offering anti-epidemic fund and delivering free masks for workers. At the later stage, regular testing
service and vaccination injection priority were also included. Rough statistics shows that the direct
government support fund in Singapore was about 14000 million Singapore dollars (SD) while the figure
for Hong Kong was approximate 6800 million Hong Kong dollars (HKD).
In Hong Kong, there were two rounds of governmental anti-epidemic fund (AEF). The construction
industry is also beneficial from them. At the AEF 1.0, an estimated expenditure of 914 million HKD was
used to support construction sector in anti-epidemic efforts, benefiting around 7,400 construction
establishments and 486,000 workers as reported by October 9, 2020 (HKSAR, 2020). At the AEF 2.0, the
expenditure was expanded to more than 6 billion by providing some 600 consulting firms with training
subsidies, construction workers with matching grant for skill upgrading, and relief measures to around
530,000 construction workers, 30,000 construction-related enterprises, and around 3,500 construction
employers. The Hong Kong construction industry council (HKCIC) handled the applications disbursed the
subsidies for the government. HKCIC also assisted the government to deliver 6 million masks, 210,000
bottles of hand sanitizer and other anti-epidemic materials to the construction industry [18]. Other measures
including the Universal Community Testing Programme from August 2020 and the regular testing at
construction sites from February 22, 2021. From March 2021, construction workers are listed in the
priority group to inject the vaccination.

Figure 1. COVID-19 pandemic development and construction industry measures to combat the pandemic [(a) Hong Kong, (b) Singapore]

Different from Hong Kong whose daily confirmed cases keep less than 150, Singapore
experienced a period during which its daily confirmed cases rocketed to more than 1000. Thus, the
Singapore construction industry undertook elevated safe distancing measures, i.e., the Circuit
Breaker Period, from April 7 to Jun 1, 2020. More significantly, the Singapore Ministry of
Manpower (MOM) required all work permit holders and S Pass holders in the construction to be
placed on mandatory stay-home notices (SHNs) from April 20 to May 18. Thus, almost all
construction works were suspended during this period. It was not until June 2, 2020 did the
Singapore BCA gradually allow some critical infrastructure construction projects to resume with
only about 5% of the construction workers under the conditions of COVID-Safe Workforce,
COVID-Safe Worksite and COVID-Safe Worker Accommodation and Transport, and COVIDSafe Training for Workers [19]. After the gradual resumption, monetary support, especially the 1.36
billion SD Construction Support Package.

4.2 Construction industry performance comparison between Hong Kong and
Singapore
The construction industry performance are represented by the GDP, construction site numbers,
construction worker number, construction job vacancy rate before, during, and after the pandemic.
Year-on year change rates of the above-mentioned indicators are used to better facilitate
comparable measurement of construction industry performance between Hong Kong and
Singapore. The rest of this section will display and elaborate the comparison results.
4.2.1 GDP
The total GDP and construction sector GDP changes in 2019 and 2020 are displayed in Figure 2.
The total GDP curves of Hong Kong and Singapore in 2020 both showed the process in which the
economic first suffered a huge hit mainly reflecting in the sharp decline in the second quarter, and
then kept decreasing compared with the same period but with a slightly eased degree. The
construction GDP in Singapore kept the same changing path with total GDP but having a more
drastic drop, while in Hong Kong, its changing path was quite different especially in the second
quarter. Due to the social events in Hong Kong, the total GDP and construction GDP kept
decreasing from 2019, which provided a more complicated environment for the construction
industry. Compared with the second quarter in 2019, though the construction GDP in the same
period in 2020 decreased, its amplitude was the smallest among other quarters. The availability of
Hong Kong public and private sector GDP allows a closer investigation. It can be interpreted that
the distinctive amplitude of construction GDP was derived from the substantial increase in the
construction GDP of public sector. The construction public sector experienced dramatic ups and
downs since 2019, quite different from the private sector which started shrinking from 2019 with a
gradually aggravated degree through 2020. The completely different changing curves of these two
sectors also proved the different extent of the epidemic’s impact on them. The public sector seems
to be more resilient than its private counterpart.
Different performances of the construction GDP in Hong Kong and Singapore were also
derived from the different responses and measures by the government. In Singapore, the
government enacted a precautionary stay-home regulation from April 20 and closed all the
construction sites in order to control the rapidly spreading epidemic. The construction work didn’t
get the gradual resumption arrangement until June 2 because of the high number of newly
confirmed cases that maintained for a long time. This long-term work stoppage explained the
drastic drop of the construction GDP in second quarter in Singapore. While in Hong Kong, the
measures and responses made by the government were mainly through anti-epidemic fund and
employment support scheme to help the construction industry overcome this hard time instead of
shutting down construction sites. Thus, the construction GDP in Hong Kong, although decreased,
experienced milder downturn.
4.2.2 Construction activity
Construction site numbers and awarded contract amount could represent the current activity of
construction work. The changes of construction site number in Hong Kong and awarded
construction contract amount in Singapore are presented in Figure 3. In Singapore, the awarded
contract number in public and private sectors had a similar decreasing path during the pandemic,
especially after April 2020 because of the precautionary stay-home regulation. Such anti-epidemic
measure had an equally effect on both sectors. However, in Hong Kong, different types of
construction sites had quite different performance during the pandemic. The number of the total

construction sites remained stable during 2020, fluctuating within the range from 1624 to 1668.
Analyzing by the classification of public and private, the year-on-year changing rate of the public
construction sites had an almost linear growth in 2020, while that of the private sector showed a
sharply decrease. As for the classification of building and civil engineering, the two curves also
had opposite changing path. The year-on year changing rate of the building construction sites kept
increasing in 2019; however, its increase began to shrink and finally decreased from the third
quarter of 2020 during the pandemic, while that of civil engineering construction sites had a
gradually increase during the pandemic compared to the same period in 2019. Because of the
increase of the public and civil engineering construction sites, the total changing rate of the
construction sites in Hong Kong kept growing during the pandemic, though the degree was
gradually shrinking.

Figure 2. GDP change comparison between Hong Kong and Singapore

Figure 3. Changes of construction site number in Hong Kong and awarded contract number in Singapore

It should be pointed out that although the changes of construction site number and the
awarded contract number can indicate the construction work situation, the difference is that
construction site number shows the construction work in progress which was planned earlier while
the awarded construction number indicates the construction work being planned now for the future.
Therefore, there is a time difference between the two indicators. The numbers in Hong Kong

indicate that the current construction works are not largely influenced by the pandemic, but
whether it will have impact on later projects in a longer time awaits further investigation of
construction site number in the future. For Singapore, the figures imply the shrink of the near
future construction works but cannot fully address the current situation.
4.2.3 Construction worker engagement
The changing paths of the construction worker engagement in Hong Kong and Singapore are quite
different during the pandemic, see Figure 4. In Singapore, the recruitment rate had a dramatic drop
during the second quarter and the third quarter of 2020 because of the precautionary stay-home
regulation since April 20, and only recovered around 0.3% after this long-term stoppage. While in
Hong Kong, the year-on-year changing rate of manual workers engaged in construction industry
decreased since 2019 but the decline speed of the rate slowed in 2020. And the number of the
engagement changed to increase in the fourth quarter. According to the sub-curve of detailed
category, the main reason of the slowed decreasing speed was that the public sector hired more
workers especially in 2020. However, manual workers hired by private sector were continuously
decreasing since 2019, which also indicated a possible larger effect on private sector than public
sector by COVID-19. Analyzing by the classification of building and civil engineering, the
workers engaged in both building works and civil engineering woks decreased but the decline rate
reduced in 2020. Specially, the workers engaged in civil engineering works began to increase in
the third quarter in 2020 compared with that in 2019.

Figure 4. Construction workers engagement changes comparison between Hong Kong and Singapore

The better performance of the Hong Kong public construction sector and civil engineering
works may not be simply explained as the higher resilience of the sector. To maintain the stability
of the society and the industry, the public sector need to provide more work opportunities for the
citizen. Therefore, its performance is not a pure economic behavior but also a governmental
behavior which may not reflect the true impact of the COVID-19. Besides, the sharp decrease of
the recruitment rate in Singapore only implies that it hired less workers. But whether more people
cannot find a job or even loose the job cannot be directly indicated here. Therefore, we need to
further investigate the job opportunities and job vacancy rate to see whether construction workers’
job are influenced by the pandemic.
4.2.4 Job vacancy rate
Job vacancy is defined as a paid post that is newly created, unoccupied, or about to become vacant.
And job vacancy rate (JVR) is calculated as follows:
JVR= No. of vacancies of manual workers / No. of job opportunities * 100
The curve of job vacancy rate, see Figure 5, showed some similar regular patterns as the
curve of construction worker engagement. Overall, in 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, the job
vacancy rate in Hong Kong (above 2%) is much higher than Singapore (around 1%). Construction
job vacancy rate in Singapore decreased from 2019 until the second quarter in 2020 when it

reached its trough of 0.4% and jumped to the highest rate in the fourth quarter in 2020. The labor
force of Singapore construction industry is mainly made up by migrant foreign workers from
neighboring Asian countries such as India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The final sharp increase at
the third quarter of 2020 indicated that the COVID-19 shocked the construction labor force a lot
because after the long-term stoppage the gradual resumption of construction work created
increasing job demands, however it is hard to hire enough foreign workers due to the border
control measures. In Hong Kong, the vacancy rate of construction manual workers remained at
less than 1% and kept decreasing from 2019. With almost similar changing path for the curve of
different categories, the vacancy rate of public sector is always larger than private sector, and the
vacancy rate of civil engineering sites is always larger than building sites. Different from
Singapore, construction industry manual works are mainly taken by local registered workers in
Hong Kong, so it can maintained a resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, which even lead to
more people working for the construction industry.

Figure 5. Construction industry job vacancy rate changes in Hong Kong and Singapore

The number of job opportunities in Hong Kong is also recorded, see Table 1. The number of
job opportunities dropped in the second quarter but began to increase from the third quarter of
2020. However, the job opportunities in the fourth quarter is still less than that of the first quarter.
However, the number of manual worker vacancies keeps sharp decreasing. It indicates that in the
fourth quarter, more manual workers are engaged in the construction industry, which may imply
the high unemployment rate in other industry in face of the third epidemic strike.
Table 1. No. of vacancies of manual workers and job opportunities in 2020 in Hong Kong
Q1
Q2
Q3

Q4

Job opportunities
Vacancies of manual workers

96,195
78

101,558
498

97,886
244

94,053
143

5 Discussion and conclusion
Different pandemic situations and different institutional arrangements in response result in
different performances of construction industry in Hong Kong and Singapore. Facing the rocketed
increase of the confirmed cases, the government of Singapore chose to close all the construction
sites and implemented the stay-home regulation from April 20 to June 2 which effectively control
the fast spread of the pandemic. However, this long-term stoppage had a great effect on the
construction industry reflecting in all representative indicators, as showed a dramatic drop of the
construction GDP, awarded contracts amount, recruitment rate and a substantial growth of the job
vacancy rate. With the gradual resumption of the construction work and stable pandemic situation,
all the indicators were recovering by degrees. Although experiencing three spikes, the epidemic
situation in Hong Kong was still controlled in a relatively low level compared with Singapore.
The measures and responses implemented by the government of Hong Kong were mainly through
anti-epidemic funding and construction industry caring campaign, which provided fiscal, goods

and material support to companies and manual workers. Reflecting on the changing path of the
indicators, all the curves were relatively smooth without sharp fluctuations. However, since the
pandemic is still on going, it is too early to conclude which institutional arrangement is better than
the other. A longer span of investigation and more data from broader dimensions are needed for
further analysing to get the final results of the comparison between these two different responding
measures.
The performance of work engagement and job vacancy rate revealed the different structure of
the construction industry workforce in Hong Kong and Singapore. The construction industry in
Singapore hired plenty of foreign workers to fill the shortage of local labour with a lower cost.
The high proportion of the recruitment of foreign workers ameliorate the labour structure and help
the industry achieve a rapid development. However, facing the hit by COVID-19, especially the
rocketed increase of the confirmed cases among foreign workers, this kind of labour structure
exposed its vulnerability. In Hong Kong, the construction workers are locally registered and their
salary are quite high. Even though, the construction industry, due to its tedious work and unsafe
nature, is not attractive to workers as evidenced by the high job vacancy rate before the pandemic.
However, it is also because of this workforce structure, the Hong Kong construction industry
showed higher resilience during the pandemic and it absorbed those who lost the jobs in other
industry. That is to say, both workforce structure has their advantages and drawbacks, and
advantages can turn to be drawbacks in extreme case, vice versa. A more resilient workforce
structure could be a balanced proportion of local workers and migrant workers but it awaits more
verification.
The figures of public and private sector comparison also indicate that construction activities
of public sector played an important role in maintaining the stability of the whole industry and
creating more job opportunities during the hard time. Based on the statistics in Hong Kong,
construction GDP, number of construction sites and manual workers in public sector all increased
around more than 10% in different degree compared with the same period in 2019, which proved
the effect of government intervention. In addition, the continuously decrease of all the indicators
in private sector indicated the huge hit by COVID-19 and a lower resilience than the public sector.
Public sectors could quickly get rid of the influence of the market economy based on the strong
support from the government, and take on more responsibility of the industry and society. In the
post-pandemic era, public sector is expected to play a key role in the economy recovery and assist
the private sector to regain their merits.

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