Nepali-Hongkonger Gurung has been on the job market for four months and feels he is hitting a dead end.

He has been in Hong Kong for more than three decades, but this is his worst stretch of being unemployed, the fifty-something said.

After losing his construction job in June this year, Gurung, who uses his surname as the name by which his friends address him, found himself competing in a market where he felt increasingly disadvantaged.

At his last project at the airport earlier this year, he estimated around 40 per cent, or 2,000 of the total 5,000 workers, were not locals but imported.

He suspected many were earning lower salaries than him. The poor economy prompted hiring companies to turn to such cheaper workers, he felt.

“I think mostly that is the one reason. Those are imported from mainland China,” said Gurung, who is a father with dependants, though he declined to share further details.

His predicament reveals a growing paradox in Hong Kong. While business leaders repeatedly sound the alarm over seeming labour shortages, there are local workers struggling to find work, a situation that appears to be exacerbated by the city’s labour import scheme.