The average base pay adjustment continued to rise despite a falling sentiment on economic development recently while pay adjustment projected for 2012 still recorded an upward trend.

These were revealed in the results of the 2011 Pay Trend Survey conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management (HKIHRM), which has been tracking pay adjustment in Hong Kong for more than two decades.

The survey covers a total of 103 companies from 17 different industrial or business sectors, with a total of some 146,000 full-time salaried employees.

A total of 98 companies from 17 sectors, employing 131,406 employees and making base pay adjustment between 1 January to 1 October 2011, confirmed their pay adjustment during the survey period (January to October) and provided relevant base pay adjustment data for the survey.

The overall average base pay adjustment recorded for the 98 companies was 4.2 percent (weighted average), 2.3 percentage points higher than the figure recorded for the same period last year (1.9 percent). All companies offered a base pay increase as compared to 95.3 percent in the same period in 2010.

By business sector (of those that provided sufficient data for analysis), companies from the financial services sector offered the highest pay increase (5.8 percent), followed by the banking and construction sectors (both at 5.2 percent).

In terms of employee numbers, 88.6 percent of employees received a base pay increase while 11.4 percent of employees had no pay adjustment. One employee received a pay cut.

“An overall upward base pay adjustment in 2011 can be explained by strong economic momentum and a buoyant job market in the first half of 2011. We saw rise in base pay by all surveyed companies. This fully reflects the active labour market in the early period of the year,” said Lawrence Hung, Chairperson of the Remuneration Committee of the HKIHRM.