Hong Kong ESLS eligible jobs (2026 guide)

Check the current eligible list

Scope first: every role below falls under the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme, sourced from the Labour Department's Common Job List (22 June 2026 revision, 56 pages), which sets out each role's median monthly wage, working hours, entry requirements and duties. Filing on the common-post form with the list's specified fields speeds up preliminary screening. The Department updates the list periodically, so verify the exact role before preparing an application.

Labour Department Common Job List & ESLS official page (official forms) →Immigration Department: Importation of Care Workers Scheme (care worker definition) →Social Welfare Department: Importation of Care Workers Scheme →

Care roles: a separate route under the SWD scheme

Residential care workers are not filed under the general ESLS route: the Importation of Care Workers Scheme for residential care homes is administered by the Social Welfare Department with its own quota system, and the Immigration Department expressly defines the scheme's care worker as a person employed by a residential care home to provide personal care to its residents — excluding care assistants (helpers), health workers and nurses. Health workers must be registered under the Residential Care Homes Ordinance framework before employment, and nurses must be registered or enrolled and hold a valid practising certificate — verify the applicable importation route by the institution type and the actual duties. Retail note: the Common Job List carries a single salesperson entry whose listed duties include customer service, merchandising, cashiering and stock-taking; cashier and shop assistant are not standalone entries on the list.

Meet the wage benchmark

The employment contract must meet the current median wage for the relevant role. Median wages are role-specific and can change, so use the current published benchmark rather than an old application or an internal estimate. Note also that the same role carries different medians in different settings — a cashier is set at $15,170 in F&B floor service but $17,150 in airlines and travel agencies and $17,770 in a hotel lobby; a dim sum steamer is $17,300 in F&B production but $18,640 in a hotel Chinese restaurant. Check the row for your industry, setting and role code — never a single number. Beyond the median there is also a statutory floor: Hong Kong's statutory minimum wage rose to HK$43.1 per hour on 1 May 2026 — the first outcome under the new annual-review mechanism, with the monthly cap on recorded working hours rising to HK$17,600. Median wage and minimum wage are two different lines: one is the filing threshold, the other the legal floor.

Subdivided F&B roles and the official classification

The Common Job List (June 2026 edition) sets out F&B roles under two departments — floor service and production (kitchen) — with some subdivided roles marked as applying only to Chinese-style or only to non-Chinese-style catering; unmarked roles apply across the board. Always match an application against the official list on three dimensions: industry, department and role code, rather than a similar job title. The figures below were cross-checked against the edition currently published on the Labour Department website.

← Swipe the table sideways to see all columns →

Prepare local-recruitment evidence

A complete public-recruitment record, interview documentation and a clear role description help demonstrate that the employer has made the required effort to recruit locally.

Role not on the Common Job List? It is not a dead end

Correct a common misreading: not being on the Common Job List does not mean a role cannot be filed under ESLS. The Department runs a dedicated route — the employer files the non-common-post application form (ESLS-1B) with full supporting documents; the Supplementary Labour Division then consults the relevant policy bureaux, departments, training bodies or professional institutes as needed, and informs the employer whether the proposed pay meets the median and whether the recruitment terms are reasonable. Uncommon posts get case-by-case screening, not automatic refusal. First check that route; General Employment Policy (GEP) or the Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professionals (ASMTP) remain alternatives for professional and management roles.

Non-common-post route and current forms (ESLS-1B Rev. 9/2026) →

Scheme statistics (government-published)

Hard numbers beat impressions. Cumulative scheme statistics published by the Government (as of end-2025):

The five industries with the most applications are catering, retail, security, cleaning and freight. Application volume reflects the scale of importation demand in these industries — it is not a measure of approval likelihood, which remains case-by-case based on the local-recruitment evidence. The latest figures are published in the Labour Department's open dataset.

One more official gauge worth noting: the annual figures in the Labour Department's open dataset show 12,214 applications received in 2025, up sharply from 6,899 in 2024 — against only several hundred to about a thousand per year before 2023. Importing workers has shifted from an exceptional measure to a routine staffing option, and employers should factor that queueing intensity into their timelines.

← Swipe the table sideways to see all columns →

Important note

This page is a guide only. The current ESLS role list, wage benchmark and approval criteria published by Hong Kong's Labour Department prevail.