Macau's number of hotel staff dropped by 15.9 percent year-on-year to 49,685 at the end of the first quarter, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) has announced.
Hotel industry sources 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 percent to 18,360 patacas (US$2,300) year-on-year.
In the first quarter, 83.1 percent and 50.8 percent 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 Macau had 119 hotels and guesthouses, according to a DSEC statement earlier this week.
Restaurant staff wages rise 17.4 pct
Meanwhile, according to yesterday's statement by the bureau, full-time restaurant employees' average earnings (excluding bonuses) rose by 17.4 percent year-on-year to 9,600 patacas in March.
At the end of March, Macau's restaurants had 23,914 full-time employees, a year-on-year decrease of 3.9 percent.
According to the latest available DSEC data on the sector, Macau 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 (NRWs).
According to Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL) statistics, local hotels, restaurants and similar businesses employed 43,395 NRWs including 33,943 mainlanders and 4,525 Philippine nationals at the end of April. One-quarter of Macau's 173,122 NRWs worked for the hotel and restaurant sectors at that time.
