If Macau is going to continue to grow, it’s going to need to find more employees. The Talents Development Committee has released data showing the administrative district will need an additional 7,525 employees to have full staffing in 2020, reports GGRAsia.
Macau has had statistical full employment for several years now, with an incredibly low unemployment rate. However, with its current pool of local, suitable workers already fully employed, there’s simply no more talent to hire for the growing casino industry.
The most obvious solution to the problem is to allow more non-resident workers to be imported from Mainland China and other nearby countries. That would require action by the Macau government, who maintain control of quotas for imported labor.
In late 2018, the industry employed 57,246 employees full-time, an increase of 1.1% year over year. Going back a year, the data shows 97.4% of middle management, 17,896 people strong, were Macau locals. Senior management roles were filled by 383 locals, representing 76.8% of that level.
The biggest vacancies in 2020 are expected to be mostly middle management jobs. Deputy managers, collections supervisors, credit supervisors, assistant security managers, assistant supply chain managers, doctors, auditors, information systems analysts and staff trainers will all need suitably talented recruits to remain at full staffing levels.
Other roles that will be in high demand, and may require less training, include facilities maintenance and repair technicians or casino technicians, card room attendants, senior security officers, security control room operators and casino attendants.
Macau is actively trying to upskill local residents to fill as many roles as possible before allowing foreign labor to rush in. They have a stated goal of having 85% locals filling middle and top-level jobs in 2020. They would get dangerously close to falling below that number if they simply imported all the staff they need.
They also risk worsening their current Rubella outbreak if they import too much from mainland China. A majority of the employees who have come down with the disease were unvaccinated imports from the mainland.
That’s not likely to be their biggest worry though. Macau has carefully made sure their best jobs go to locals, and they’ll likely aim to educate and capitalize on every last bit of talent they can find locally before they open the floodgates.
