Out of the 181,000 non-resident workers in Macao at the end of May, more than 122,000 of them – or 67 percent of the total – hailed from the Chinese mainland, according to figures from the Labour Affairs Bureau.
The proportion is higher than May 2019 – the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic struck – when mainland Chinese made up 62 percent of the SAR’s non-resident workers. About a third of mainland Chinese workers in Macao are employed in the hospitality sector. The construction, wholesale and retail trade are also major employers.
Philippine nationals made up the biggest group of foreign non-resident workers, at almost 30,000 people. The Vietnamese are the second largest foreign worker community, numbering around 8,000, followed by Indonesians.
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Overall, numbers of non-resident workers were up by about 1,000 month-on-month and by 19,200 year-on-year.
The hospitality sector – encompassing hotels, restaurants and similar – remains Macao’s biggest employer of non-resident workers, employing a total of almost 51,200 people in May. It also saw the most year-on-year growth, 23 percent, due to rising visitor numbers.
The number of non-residents employed by the sector categorised as “recreational, cultural, gaming and other” has meanwhile grown by 20 percent since May 2023 to reach 10,500 people.
