Salary trends and projections in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area

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A slight dip in salary increase has been seen in both areas in 2024. Looking forward, 63% of Hong Kong companies and 31.3% of companies in the GBA forecast a pay rise next year.

Though a slight dip in salary increase has been seen in both Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (GBA) in 2024, 63% of Hong Kong companies and 31.3% of companies in the GBA forecasted a pay rise next year, according to the 2024 Pay Trend Surveys conducted by Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management and CIIC Management Consulting.

The surveys have encompassed 107,400 full-time salaried employees in Hong Kong from 186 companies across 12 business sectors, as well as 184,338 full-time salaried employees from 435 companies in nine GBA cities across more than 10 business sectors.

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Base pay adjustment in 2024

Hong Kong

The data showed that 91.7% of companies surveyed offered a pay increase this year, while 8.3% opted for a pay freeze.

The average salary for Hong Kong employees decreased by 0.6 percentage point to 3.2% in 2024. After deducting the 1.8% rise in the Composite Consumer Price Index from January to August 2024, the real base pay adjustment stood at 1.4%.

This year, local companies in Hong Kong implemented an increase of 3.4%, which is 0.8 percentage point higher than the 2.6% increase made by multinational companies.

The average pay adjustment of different sizes of company in 2024:

• small-sized companies (those with fewer than 100 employees): 3.1%
• medium-sized companies (with an employee size between 100 and 1,000): 3.0%,
• large-sized companies (with more than 1,000 employees): 3.2%

The survey also found that 80.2% of employees received a pay rise in 2024, while 19.8% of employees were affected by the pay freeze, marking a 13 percentage point increase from the previous year.

Middle-level employees experienced the largest pay adjustment at 3.7%, while senior-level employees were slightly behind at 3.6%.

Factors that affected the pay adjustment decisions of employers included:

• company performance (82%)
• individual performance of employees (59%)
• market/competitor’s pay adjustment (29%)

GBA

GBA employees saw an average salary increase of 4.8% in 2024, a decrease of 0.7 percentage point from 2023.

Over three-fifths (61.2%) of companies offered a pay increase this year, while 17.9% opted for a pay freeze. For the companies planning to increase pay, 41.8% stated that they would adjust it according to the original plan without being affected by the market environment, while 19.3% reported a decrease in pay adjustment budgets.

R&D/technical staff saw the most substantial pay adjustment at 7.0%, followed by sales staff with a 5.5% pay increase.

Additionally, promoted employees experienced a notable pay adjustment rate surge of up to 10%, while core/high-performing employees received a pay increase of 8.5%.

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Bonus payments in 2024

Hong Kong

This year, 37.2% of the companies indicated they had guaranteed bonus schemes for staff. The average size of guaranteed bonus was one month of base pay, similar to the level of 1.04 months in the previous year.

On the other hand, 83.9% reported that they offered non-guaranteed bonus to their employees, with 67.1% being eligible for a non-guaranteed bonus plan, higher by 7.5 percentage points compared to previous year. For those employees awarded a non-guaranteed bonus, the average size of the bonus was 1.23 months of base pay, lower than the 1.29 months recorded in the previous year.

The average size of non-guaranteed bonus received by employees at different levels was:

• top-level staff: 3.15 months of base pay
• senior-level staff: 1.85 months
• middle-level staff: 1.24 months
• general staff staff:1.05 months

GBA

Mainland companies offered various incentives for employees. The most prevalent type of incentives are:

• year-end bonuses (83%)
• performance bonuses (67%)
• project bonuses (40%)

The average amount of year-end bonuses that employees received in 2023 was 1.8 months of base pay, consistent with last year's figures.

Half (50%) of middle-level management (sales) received year-end bonuses equivalent to three times or more of their base pay, while middle-level management (non-sales) followed closely at 48%, sales staff at 36%, and R&D/technical staff at 29%.

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Pay adjustment projection for 2025

	pay rise	pay freeze	have yet to conduct a forecast
Hong Kong	63% (the average projected pay adjustment was 3.6% upward)	3%	33%
GBA	31.3% (the average projected pay adjustment was 4.7% upward)	12.9%	55.9%

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