Hong Kong
MEDIUM · sourced, not yet live-verified
Pending live-verification. The source URLs have not yet been fetched and archived in this round; the city will return to a HIGH classification once that is done. Original rationale: Multi-source Hong Kong with government and academic data: (1) HK Census & Statistics Department survey commissioned by Labour Department (conducted Dec 2023-Mar 2024, ~13,000 platform workers surveyed). TIER 2 gov_data, large-N. reported via HKFP March 2025 + Young Post Club deep-dive June 2025 + LegCo manpower panel, (2) Lingnan University academic research on HK food delivery market (Dr. Heiwai Tang, et al.) reporting KeeTa full-time riders earn up to HK$35,000/month, (3) Federation of HK & Kowloon Labour Unions (lawmaker Lam Chun-sing) data, (4) Riders Rights Concern Group advocacy data, (5) named worker testimony (John Lam, foodpanda+KeeTa, HK$45-50k/mo at 60hr/week = HK$190/hr top-end). Range HK$50-200/hr, $9.40 USD = HK$73 reflects all-rider weighted average factoring in part-time/full-time mix.
Only HIGH-confidence cities carry a full verification audit. See the methodology for what each tier means.
Earnings (USD per hour)
Source: Hong Kong Free Press: foodpanda rider pay coverage
What would you take home in Hong Kong?
Take-home, weekly
$227
Take-home, monthly
$985
Gross, weekly
$282
Gross, monthly
$1,222
With a 1BR apartment outside the city centre at $1681/mo, rent costs more than your monthly take-home (171% of monthly net).
Take-home is gross hourly minus an estimated tax/expense rate per country. See the methodology page for the derivation. This widget assumes you actually work the hours you set. For app-based delivery, a portion of logged-in time is unpaid waiting; the headline rate reflects engaged time only where regulators have defined it.
Cost of living vs. earnings
That works out to roughly 51 hours per week. Rent at $1,681 per month is 103 percent of gross monthly earnings, which puts a Hong Kong delivery driver in HUD's “severely cost-burdened” band by the federal definition (over 30 percent of gross income on housing). Measured against net take-home pay, which is what a worker actually has available to spend, the same rent is 128 percent. Affordable rent at this earnings rate, defined by HUD as no more than 30 percent of gross income, would be around $490 per month. Across the 46 cities in the dataset, Hong Kong ranks 36th for hours needed to cover rent, where lower is better.
Pay vs. local labour market
Gross hourly is 146% of local minimum wage, 69% of local median.
Notes
Outside-of-center rent estimated as 70% of city-center rent pending Round D1 verification.
View Hong Kong on the interactive map
See full source citations for this city on the sources page. Read about how each metric is computed in the methodology.
Primary earnings source: hongkongfp.com/2025/03/19/a-third-of-hong-kong-delivery-workers-make-under-hk5000-a-month-govt-survey-finds/ · archived