Young jobseekers drawn to public sector

Last month, around 11,000 people applied for a mere 160 government vacancies through the public sector recruitment examination process, making these jobs some of the most sought-after in the territory.

Local sociologist Larry So puts the appeal of government jobs down to high entry-level salaries, a considerable number of annual leave days and several other benefits.

The proportion of Macau’s 405,000-strong labor force employed in the public sector last year was 7.1 percent, down from 7.9 percent in 2011, but considerably higher than most other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

In datasets provided by the World Bank, the size of the public sector is normally expressed as a proportion of the total population rather than of the total labor force. Using this measurement, the approximately 28,750 civil servants in Macau represent around 4.4 percent of people in the MSAR, significantly higher than the 2.7 percent average for the Asia Pacific region between 2000 and 2013.

Macau’s 4.4 percent is considerably higher than the 3.45 percent in Japan and the 2.5 percent in Singapore. It also far outstrips estimates for Indonesia (less than 2 percent), the Philippines (1.3 percent) and East-Timor (1.8 percent), though is smaller than Thailand (about 5 percent), Vietnam (4.8 percent) and China (estimates vary, thought sometimes considered to be 6 percent).

Moreover, Macau’s population includes the 180,000 migrant workers in the territory, accounting for around 27 percent of its people. It is not clear whether non-resident workers were included in the relevant World Bank data sets of the other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We have a high [proportion] of civil servants in Macau – especially compared to Hong Kong – and the question is, do we need that many?” said Larry So, speaking to the Times yesterday.

There is an expectation that, due to the fixed costs of government, countries with fewer people will have a higher proportion of their population working in the public sector. While a trend exists, not all small countries with small populations have such high proportions.

Luxembourg (570,000) and the Bahamas (400,000) are on one end of the scale with extensive public sector employment, but Bahrain (1.37 million) and Barbados (285,000) are on the other.

So told the Times yesterday that although public sector employment in Macau represents a high proportion of the city’s population, it would be even higher were the government to nationalize certain monopoly service providers.

He commended the fact that some services in the city are privatized in Macau under concessionaire agreements. In other jurisdictions, these services are publicly owned or funded. Specifically, he mentioned the telecommunications and utilities sector, but also stressed that the casino industry might be included. According to DSEC, more than 81,000 people were employed by the gaming sector last year.

“The number of civil servants is diminished by the number of outsourced contracts,” said So. “There are private companies that are required to do what the government tells them [to], without [their workers] being classified as civil servants.”

He suggested that privatization would help to streamline governmental organizations, which around the world are considered bureaucratic and inefficient.

“The government could [privatize and] subsidize some services, for example in social welfare, culture and sport,” proposed the scholar. “We need to ask ourselves whether the government needs [to be the one] to provide, when the alternative is to outsource many of these services to NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and this would be much cheaper than paying the salaries of all of these civil servants.”

“It would also create more diversity in the services offered and make the organizations [involved in the delivery of services] more creative through competition,” he added.

According to the International Labor Organization, Cuba, Russia, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Denmark and Norway are among the countries with the highest proportions of employees in the public sector. DB