29th August 2026 – (Hong Kong) A Hong Kong household earning more than HK$30,000 a month now sits above the income midpoint for the entire city, after the Census and Statistics Department reported that the median held steady in the second quarter of 2026.
The figure, published in the latest Quarterly Report on the General Household Survey, was unchanged from a year earlier. Officials stress that the statistics exclude foreign domestic helpers, a standard adjustment that strips out live-in migrant workers when measuring how local families actually live. For anyone benchmarking their own finances, crossing HK$30,000 means outperforming roughly half of all domestic households in Hong Kong.
The department also breaks medians down by household size, revealing sharp differences in what counts as a typical wage packet. In the April-to-June quarter, one-person homes recorded HK$11,000, two-person households HK$24,000 and three-person households HK$40,400. Four-person families led the ladder at HK$54,400, while five-person households posted HK$51,300 and homes with six or more members HK$54,600. Year on year, medians rose for one-, two-, three-, four- and six-or-more-person households, but fell for five-person families — the only size category to register a decline.
Housing type tells an equally stark story. Public rental tenants earned a median of HK$20,500 across all households and HK$28,000 among economically active homes. Residents in subsidised home ownership housing — flats sold under government assistance schemes — reported HK$27,500 overall and HK$37,500 for working households. Private permanent housing stood at HK$42,400 for all households and HK$54,500 for economically active ones, meaning private-sector tenants on average out-earned public rental households by more than HK$21,900 at the all-household level.
The release is part of the government’s rolling household survey, which feeds labour-market indicators as well as income tables used by policymakers and researchers. With living costs still biting and wage growth uneven across sectors, the flat citywide median underscores how middle-rung household income has plateaued even as larger families and private-home owners pull away from single earners and public housing residents.