GGRAsia – Macau dealer average pay up 3.5pct y-o-y in June

Macau dealer average pay up 3.5pct y-o-y in June

Aug 20, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Average June earnings of Macau table-games dealer rose by 3.5 percent year-on-year, according to the city’s second-quarter 2021 survey on the local gaming industry’s labour needs and wages.

The average June income for a dealer in Macau was MOP19,950 (US$2,486). A Macau dealer’s average income had been MOP21,080, as of December 2019, before the city saw the onset of Covid-19 pandemic.

Under a local-government policy, only Macau ID holders can be casino dealers.

The average earnings – excluding bonuses – of full-time employees in Macau’s gaming sector in June increased 2.1 percent year-on-year, to MOP23,690, according to the survey, published on Friday by Macau’s Statistics and Census Service.

Of the gaming sector, those hired as “directors and managers” were amongst the groups that saw a year-on-year decline in their average earnings as of June, the survey indicated. The average June earnings of the gaming sector’s directors and managers decreased 10.2 percent year-on-year to MOP52,130.

It was not clear from the information provided whether the changes in the gaming sector workers’ earnings were linked to the widespread introduction by local casino firms of unpaid-leave schemes. Such moves have come with the downturn in tourism amid travel restrictions relating to Covid-19, as the gaming industry has looked to cut its operating costs.

The survey excluded people working either for VIP gambling junket promoters or for junket associates.

The tally of full-time employees in the gaming sector in the second quarter of 2021 went down by 1,691 from the prior-year period, to 55,768, a decline of 2.9 percent.

The number of table-games dealers totalled 24,643, down by 701 year-on-year.

In the second quarter, the number of new recruits in the gaming sector was 466, which stood at about 0.8 percent of the number of the sectoral full-time employees. Meanwhile, there were 1,016 employees that left the gaming sector in that quarter, representing a 1.8 percent turnover rate, according to the official data.

“The employee recruitment rate (0.8 percent) and the employee turnover rate (1.8 percent) increased by 0.6 percentage point [year-on-year] and 1.2 percentage points respectively, while the job vacancy rate was only 0.1 percent,” said the survey. Such data reflected the fact that the demand for fresh labour in the gaming sector “remained relatively low”, the statistics service stated in the survey.