Macao’s number of hotel staff dropped by 15.9 per cent year-on-year to 49,685 at the end of the first quarter, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) has announced.
The hotel industry told The Macau Post Daily today that the decrease was due to the “severely adverse” impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the local tourism and gaming sectors.
However, according to yesterday’s DSEC statement, full-time hotel employees’ earnings (excluding bonuses) rose by 1.0 per cent to MOP 18,360 (US$2,300) year-on-year.
In the first quarter, 83.1 per cent and 50.8 per cent of job vacancies required knowledge of Putonghua and English respectively.
At the end of the first quarter, the hotel sector had 626 vacancies, down by 360 year-on-year.
At the end of April, Macao had 119 hotels and guesthouses, according to a DSEC statement earlier this week.
Restaurant staff wages rise 17.4 per cent
Meanwhile, according to yesterday’s statement by the bureau, full-time restaurant employees’ average earnings (excluding bonuses) rose by 17.4 per cent year-on-year to MOP 9,600 in March.
At the end of March, Macao’s restaurants had 23,914 full-time employees, a year-on-year decrease of 3.9 per cent.
According to the latest available DSEC data on the sector, Macao had 2,419 restaurants, bars, pubs and cooked-food stalls at the end of 2019.
Both the hotel and restaurant sectors employ a large number of non-resident workers.
According to Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL) statistics, local hotels, restaurants and similar businesses employed 43,395 non-resident workers including 33,943 mainlanders and 4,525 Philippine nationals at the end of April. One-quarter of Macao’s 173,122 non-resident workers worked for the hotel and restaurant sectors at that time.
