Macau casino staff earnings up in 4Q, above 2019 levels

Mar 07, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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The number of full-time workers in the Macau gaming sector declined by 0.8 percent year-on-year to 51,771 in the fourth quarter of 2023, but average earnings – excluding “irregular remuneration” – rose by 6.8 percent from a year earlier.

That is according to the “Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages” for the industry, published on Wednesday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. Survey results are issued twice a year.

According to the latest survey, the average monthly wage of full-timers was MOP25,290 (US$3,139) in December, up by 6.3 percent on the same month a year earlier.

Casinos in Macau have seen a recovery in their business since the beginning of 2023, coinciding with the ending of Covid-19 related restrictions in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

Average gaming staff earnings for the final quarter of 2023 were up 2.6 percent compared to the MOP24,640 average salary in fourth-quarter 2019, before the onset of the pandemic in early 2020.

The Macau gaming sector employed a total of 58,225 full-time workers in the final quarter of 2019, according to official data. That was 12.5-percent more than in the three months to December 31, 2023.

Macau had 23,359 people employed table games dealers as of the fourth quarter last year, down by 362 year-on-year. Their average earnings rose by 5.4 percent from the prior-year period, to MOP20,870; but the figure was down 1.0 percent compared to the final quarter of 2019.

The quarterly survey does not include people working either for VIP gambling junket promoters, or junket associates.

“With the gradual recovery of the economy, the demand for manpower [in the gaming sector] increased,” noted the statistics bureau.

There were 400 job vacancies in the gaming sector in the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 387 compared with the prior-year quarter.

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