GGRAsia – Macau gaming jobs down in first half, hiring slowed

Macau gaming jobs down in first half, hiring slowed

Nov 24, 2020 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

There were 57,905 people engaged in the Macau casino industry at the end of the second quarter 2020, a reduction of 1.5 percent – or down by 872 jobs – from the end of 2019. Most of those employed in the sector were full-timers, namely 57,459 individuals. The latter tally was down by 1.3 percent, or 766 job posts, from the end of the fourth quarter last year.

That is according to the latest survey on manpower needs and wages of the local gaming industry, released on Monday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The survey excluded people working either for VIP gambling junket promoters or for junket associates.

There were 25,344 table-games dealers employed in the Macau casino industry at the end of June, up by 131 year-on-year, but down by 115 from the end of the fourth quarter of 2019, said the statistics bureau. Under a local-government policy, only Macau ID holders can be Macau casino dealers.

Meanwhile, the June average salary for full-time workers in Macau’s gaming industry – excluding bonuses – went down by 5.8 percent from December 2019, to MOP23,200 (US$2,906); while that of casino dealers fell by 8.6 percent in the same period, to MOP19,270.

“In the second quarter of 2020, only 129 new employees were hired, a notable decrease of 93.4 percent from 1,942 in the same quarter of 2019,” said the statistics body. In the fourth quarter of 2019, a total of 1,294 new employees had been hired by the city’s gaming industry.

“The employee recruitment rate (0.2 percent) and the employee turnover rate (0.6 percent) went down by 3.2 and 1.7 percentage points respectively, while the job vacancy rate fell to near zero,” said the bureau. “These indicators reflect a substantial decline in demand for manpower in the gaming sector,” it added.

The city-wide unemployment rate for the second quarter was 2.5 percent, up 40 basis points from the 2.1 percent unemployment rate of the first quarter, according to other data released previously by the statistics service.

Casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) had fallen by 81.4 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months of 2020, to MOP45.88 billion, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, according to separate data released by the local casino regulator.