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‘Life was hard, it’s now harder’: profiles of struggle in Hong Kong as inflation bites

  • What can HK$100 buy these days? For the poor, going to the market shows what inflation really means
  • It’s a shock when some realise they’re no longer middle class, while business owners ponder letting staff go

Reading Time:6 minutes
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Illustration: Henry Wong
In this final instalment of a three-part series, Denise Tsang and Fiona Sun talk to Hongkongers from all walks of life – from business owners to those on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder – about how runaway inflation has eaten into their lives.
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Families across Hong Kong are feeling the bite of higher prices as inflation increasingly makes its presence felt, and it is not only the poor and elderly who are affected. Middle-class families and business operators are hurting too.
After almost two years of lockdown and disruptions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the city’s economy is finally on the road to recovery and the job market has been improving.

The unemployment rate declined to 4.3 per cent between August and October from 7.2 per cent during the height of the pandemic between December 2020 and February this year. But wage increases have yet to catch up with inflation.

Wage rises, at 0.7 per cent for January to March this year and 1.1 per cent in the second quarter, were at the lowest levels in over a decade.

Meanwhile, the composite consumer price index, which reflects the prices of a range of goods and services, rose between 0.5 per cent and 3.7 per cent each month from January to September.

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But those numbers are just the beginning of the story.

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