The average earnings (excluding bonuses) of the gaming sector’s full-time employees amounted to MOP 23,200 (US$2,900) in June, a year-on-year decrease of 5.5 per cent, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) has announced.
Dealers’ average earnings were down by 7.6 per cent year-on-year to MOP 19,270 in June.
Macao’s gaming industry has been hard hit by the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The first COVID-19 case in Macao was confirmed on 22 January.
According to a DSEC statement on Thursday, the gaming industry’s number of full-time employees stood at 57,459 at the end of the second quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 381. The number of dealers rose by 131 year-on-year but dropped by 115 quarter-to-quarter.
The statement pointed out that due to the COVID-19 repercussions, the gaming sector had only 25 vacancies at the end of the second quarter, down by 879 year-on-year.
In terms of recruitment prerequisites, 68.0 per cent of the vacancies required working experience and 76.0 per cent required tertiary education, while knowledge of Putonghua and English both were required for 88.0 per cent of the vacancies.
In the second quarter, only 129 new employees were hired, a 93.4 per cent decline from the same quarter of last year when the sector hired 1,942 people.
The statement underlined that the sector’s employee recruitment rate (0.2 per cent) and employee turnover rate (0.6) dropped by 3.2 and 1.7 percentage points respectively, while the job vacancy rate fell to near zero. “These indicators reflect a substantial decline in demand for manpower in the gaming sector,” the bureau noted.
Public servants and gaming industry staff as well as public utility and banking sector employees are Macao’s top earners, official statistics show.
According to the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), Macao had 41 casinos at the end of the second quarter, three of which – all of them owned by SJM – had their operations suspended.
In the first half of the year, Macao’s gross gaming revenues fell 77.4 per cent year-on-year to MOP 33.72 billion, of which MOP 30.48 billion were generated in the first quarter, according to DICJ statistics.
(The Macau Post Daily/Macau News)
PHOTO © Xinhua News Agency/Cheong Kam Ka
