How Hong Kong Is Helping Graduates Find Jobs as AI Changes Work

AI now automates basic tasks, coding, translation, and first-line customer service work that many Hong Kong graduates would once have relied on to get their first experience in the job market. 

To put this into perspective, the underemployment rate rose to 1.7% from 1.6% in the April-to-June period, according to a South China Morning Post report. That’s around 145,700 people who were unemployed during the period, up from 139,700 in the three months to June. 

Alexa Chow Yee-ping, managing director of human resource consultancy ACTS Consulting, said fresh graduates are facing a tougher fight for jobs as the widespread AI adoption has eliminated many low-skilled posts. 

For young workers, that creates a more difficult problem: how do you get the experience needed to build a career when the jobs designed to give you that experience are disappearing? 

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TechloyDavid Adubiina

Hong Kong’s four-step answer to the entry-level gap 

Speaking at the Global Youth Powerhouse Summit for young technology leaders, Kevin Choi Kit-ming, the city’s Permanent Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, said AI was performing well in many routine tasks that once made up a graduate’s first job. 

In the meeting, he outlined a four-step AI “talent ladder” designed to take emerging professionals from basic AI literacy to industry leadership. The first step is getting more people access to the technology. 

The government plans to remove cost and access barriers to AI tools, expand large-scale education programmes and promote AI use among students, researchers and working professionals, something countries like China and South Korea are already doing. 

Choi said Hong Kong was already starting from a strong position. Citing a recent report, he said 70% of Hongkongers were proficient AI users, while 20% were “super users” who used AI agents in their daily tasks. 

But knowing how to use AI is not enough if the goal is to help graduates find new ways into the workforce. The second step, therefore, is to turn users into builders.  

Choi said the government wants to “convert active learners into practical innovators” through higher education and advanced talent development initiatives. This gives the talent ladder a clear progression, where workers start by learning how to use AI, then develop the ability to apply it to real problems. 

From AI users to industry innovators 

The third step takes that capability beyond individual workers as Hong Kong plans to build an ecosystem that creates synergies between research and industry, bringing the people developing new technologies closer to businesses that can put them to use. 

For the final step, the secretary said Hong Kong would provide the infrastructure and policy environment needed to support innovation, which focuses on creating the conditions for those ideas to grow. 

“A ladder needs solid ground,” he said, describing that foundation as a strategy that balances innovation with responsible governance. The government is also preparing for problems that could emerge as AI becomes more deeply embedded in work.