Gaming staff wages rose 6.8% at year end 2023

The wages of full-time employees of the local gaming sector rose on average last December by 6.8% year-on-year, to MOP25,290, the results of a survey on labor needs and wages for the last quarter of 2023 from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) has revealed.

These average earnings exclude all exceptional remuneration (such as tips and other benefits) and take into account full-time employees.

Among these, the average earnings of dealers (MOP20,870) rose 5.4%, with DSEC explaining this was mainly due to the low base of comparison caused by a relatively large number of employees being placed on unpaid leave in the same month of 2022.

Concurrently, and despite the broadly announced need for workers due to the resumption of activities, at the end of last year there were fewer than 403 people employed in this sector, a slight drop of 0.8% y-o-y.

Among them, the most significant drop was registered at the dealers, which totaled 23,359, down 362 (-1.5%) year-on-year.

The DSEC also noted that in general, gaming sector job vacancies rose 387 y-o-y to 400 at the end of the fourth quarter (Q4).

Among the vacancies, 23.8% required work experience, and 84.8% required senior secondary education or lower. Knowledge of Mandarin and English languages were requirements for, respectively, 97% and 83.5% of these job posts.

In Q4 the number of newly recruited employees topped slightly the number of those leaving, totaling, respectively 1,035 and 843.

The employee recruitment rate (2%) and the employee turnover rate (1.6%) grew 1.8 and 0.1%, respectively, and the job vacancy rate was 0.8%.

The figures indicate a slight increase in the demand for workers in the gaming sector.

As usual, the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages of the Gaming Sector excluded those operating as junket promoters and associates.