At the end of 2021, the demand for manpower in almost all economic sectors decreased. Wages also continued to drop in the last quarter of the year, results from a survey by the Statistics and Census Service show.
According to the release, nearly all the surveyed sectors registered drops in demand for manpower with the only exception being Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities where there was an increase of 1.7% year-on-year compared with the last quarter of 2020.
Despite the increase in this sector the average earnings of full-time employees in December registered a fall of 3.6% year-on-year to MOP18,020.
The Transport, Storage & Communications sector was the only other sector where the manpower needs did not drop, maintaining the level seen a year earlier. As in the Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities, however, the average earnings of those employed by this sector dropped by 2% year-on-year to MOP21,390.
In Wholesale & Retail Trade the decrease in manpower was 1.7% y-o-y, while the earnings of these workers in December were down 3.5% compared to June 2021, but up by 3.9% y-o-y to an average of MOP13,980.
From the sectors surveyed, Security Activities registered the most significant drop y-o-y, decreasing by 3.6%. Nonetheless, the average earnings of employees in this sector were the only ones registering an increase (by 2.2%) to MOP13,580.
