Gaming employees grow as sector sees recruitment slowdown

The number of full-time employees in Macau’s gaming sector increased by 1.7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the government. However, supplementary data released yesterday showed a general slowing in the demand for manpower.

Stemming from a survey of casino operators, junket operators and junket associates, the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) said that the number of people employed by the industry had reached 58,225 in the final quarter of 2019. The number of dealers rose by 3% to 25,459 compared to last year, the data shows.

In December 2019, the average earnings (excluding bonuses) of full-time employees in the gaming sector was 24,640 patacas, up by 3.8% year-on-year, while the average earnings of dealers increased by 3.1% to 21,080 patacas.

There were 443 job vacancies in total at the end of the fourth quarter of 2019, down by 878 year-on-year. About one-third of the vacancies were for clerk positions, while another third were for service and sales workers. In terms of recruitment criteria, just under half of the vacancies required work experience, while three-quarters required a senior secondary education or less. Of the total vacancies, 68.4% and 49.4% required knowledge of Mandarin and English respectively.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, a total of 1,294 new employees were hired, down by more than one-quarter from 1,737 in the same quarter of 2018. The job vacancy rate (0.8%) and the employee recruitment rate (2.2%) fell by 1.5 and 0.8 percentage points respectively year-on-year. These indicators reflect a slowdown in the demand for manpower in the gaming sector.

Meanwhile, the government has indicated that the amount of gaming taxes collected in the first two months of the year dropped 12.2% year-on-year to 17.2 billion patacas. The news follows the 87.8% collapse in gross gaming revenue last month.

Gaming taxes are a major component of government revenue, accounting for about 80% of total revenue. DB