Gaming employee numbers continue decline

The number of workers in the gaming sector has continued to decline, with figures plunging to 53,592 full-time employees in the second quarter of the year.

The latest figures provided by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) show that the number of employees is down 2,176 year-on-year. 

Of all gaming employees, dealers totaled 24,093, a drop of 550 year-on-year.

In June 2022, average earnings (excluding bonuses) of full-time employees in the gaming sector were MOP23,270, down by 1.8% year-on-year. Average dealers’ earnings dropped by 2.9% to MOP19,370.

At the end of the second quarter, there were just 19 job vacancies in the gaming sector, a decrease of 37 year-on-year.

The city’s unemployment rate has been at a record high from May to July, standing at 5.4% with workers’ associations urging the government to launch further job-matching schemes and safeguard the livelihood and employment of the population.

In the second quarter, the employee recruitment rate (0.3%) and the employee turnover rate (1.5%) for the gaming sector decreased by 0.5 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively, while the job vacancy rate fell to near-zero. This implies that demand for manpower in the gaming sector remained relatively low due to the ongoing impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

The city’s economy contracted 39.3% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022 amid the coronavirus outbreak in neighboring regions, affecting the city’s border restrictions, and the city’s own mid-June outbreak, the largest to date. 

Second quarter results are down 66.3% when compared to the same period of 2020, as a result of the continuous decline in exports of services, exports of gaming services and other tourism services. LV