GGRAsia – Macau casino dealer tally up 4Q, but hiring slowed

Macau casino dealer tally up 4Q, but hiring slowed

Mar 09, 2020 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

There were 25,459 table-games dealers employed in the Macau casino industry at the end of the fourth quarter 2019, up 3.0 percent from the prior-year period. 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.

Under a local government policy, only Macau ID holders can be Macau casino dealers. The city’s overall unemployment rate for October to December stood at only 1.7 percent, according to the available official data from the census service.

Meanwhile, the December average salary for a Macau casino dealer increased by 3.1 percent in year-on-year terms, to MOP21,080 (US$2,657).

As of the end of the fourth quarter 2019, Macau’s gaming industry had a total of 58,225 full-time employees, an increase of 1.7 percent year-on-year.

In December, average earnings – excluding bonuses – of full-time employees with Macau ID across the whole of the gaming sector were MOP24,640, which was 3.8 percent higher than a year ago.

But the survey flagged what the statistics bureau referred to as a “slowdown” in demand for new employees for the gaming sector during the reporting quarter.

In the three months to December 31, a total of 1,294 new employees was hired by the gaming industry, a decline of 25.5 percent from the same quarter of 2018. The employee recruitment rate and the job vacancy rate during the reporting period fell year-on-year by 0.8 percentage points and 1.5 percentage points respectively.

Macau casino industry job vacancies tallied 443 in the fourth quarter, 878 fewer than that in the same period last year. Among the vacancies, only 77 were for casino dealers, according to the official data.

In the final quarter of 2019 casino gross gaming revenue in the Macau market fell 8.4 percent year-on-year, to just under MOP72.16 billion; from slightly more than MOP78.79 billion in the prior-year quarter, according to data confirmed in mid-January by the local casino regulator.