Some 207,300 people aged 15 and over were self-employed during the second quarter last year, according to the Census & Statistics Department Special Topics Report No.36 issued today.

It contains the findings of two special enquiries on casual and self employment.

At the time of enumeration, the median duration of self-employment was six years to less than seven years.

Self-employment was more commonly observed among older people and those with primary education or below.

A much higher proportion were engaged in the transport, storage and communications sector and worked as plant and machine operators and assemblers.

31% preferred to start their own business

Some 31% of them became self-employed because they preferred to start their own business while one-fifth became self-employed due to the custom of their trade/norm of their industry.

Another tenth did so as they considered it difficult to get work due to their low qualification, low skill level or old age. About 9% became self-employed because they were not satisfied with the wages or working conditions of jobs they were offered and another 9% wanted better control on working hours.

72,100 became casual employees

Some 72,100 employees were casual employees at the time of enumeration

About 78.8% of them were employed on a day-to-day basis, while 21.2% were employed for a fixed period of less than 60 days. Nearly 60% were working full-time in their present job.

Some 62% of the casual employees did not have a permanent job due to the custom of their trade (e.g. contracting arrangement of work in the construction sector). Another one-quarter was due to involuntary reasons, because of difficulty in finding a permanent job or slack work in the company.

Casual work more common among men

Casual employment was more commonly observed among males and employees with primary education and below.

Compared with all employees, a distinctly higher proportion of the casual employees were engaged in the construction sector, and a higher proportion of them worked as craft and related workers and workers in elementary occupations.

Some 63,100 casual employees had changed jobs in Hong Kong during the 12 months before enumeration. Their median number of times of job changes during the 12-month period was seven.