Reply #5: Hong Kong's just the opposite now. [View All]

When I came here, I started in industry, but I had a teaching cert so jumped to secondary school teaching when I realised it paid more - about US$40,000, but after two years they gave me a senior position which doubled my salary to just over US$80,000. And the max tax rate is just 17%. At that time they were having trouble recruiting teachers because the economy was booming. Now it's just the opposite. After a few years of serious recession, engineers, accountants, business and IT majors are all competing to get into a PGCE program so they can apply for teaching jobs. They pay better and they are more stable. How things have changed, even with teaching pay having dropped about 10% in the last 4 years since I stopped teaching at the secondary level. I think it's the stability of teaching here that is attracting people from other professions, even more than the salary.