The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the first quarter of 2019. Survey coverage for this quarter comprises Manufacturing; Hotels; Restaurants; Insurance; Financial Intermediation Activities; Electricity, Gas & Water Supply; Child-care and Elderly Care. This survey excludes the self-employed, as well as insurance agents and brokers not directly employed by insurance companies.
At the end of the first quarter of 2019, Hotels had 59,516 full-time employees, up by 4.3% year-on-year; average earnings (excluding bonuses) of full-time employees in March rose by 1.5% to MOP18,180. Restaurants had 26,185 full-time employees, down by 2.3% year-on-year, with the average earnings rising by 13.4% to MOP10,430.
Manufacturing had 8,987 full-time employees, a decrease of 7.0% year-on-year; average earnings in March rose by 11.4% to MOP12,540. Electricity, Gas & Water Supply had 1,095 full-time employees, down by 2.4% from a year earlier, while average earnings dropped by 1.3% to MOP31,630.
Insurance had 610 full-time employees, up by 8.2% year-on-year; average earnings in March rose by 5.8% to MOP29,050. Furthermore, full-time employees in Financial Intermediation Activities increased by 3.9% year-on-year to 375, whereas average earnings decreased by 3.1% to MOP14,900.
Child-care and Elderly Care had 1,518 and 897 full-time employees respectively, up by 6.8% and 26.9% year-on-year; average earnings in March increased by 2.8% and 4.5% respectively to MOP15,550 and MOP15,190.
At the end of the first quarter, the number of vacant posts in Restaurants (2,223) and Hotels (2,133) fell by 71 and 51 respectively year-on-year. There were 92.3% of the job vacancies in Insurance requiring knowledge of English; meanwhile, 68.1% and 51.0% of the vacancies in Hotels required knowledge of Mandarin and English respectively.
In the first quarter, the employee recruitment rate (4.1%), the job vacancy rate (3.5%) and the employee turnover rate (4.3%) of Hotels fell by 1.7, 0.2 and 0.1 percentage points respectively year-on-year, indicating a slowdown in demand for manpower in the industry. For Restaurants, the employee recruitment rate (5.8%) and the employee turnover rate (6.9%) rose by 0.3 and 0.2 percentage points respectively, implying that the demand for manpower in the industry was relatively stable.
In the first quarter, a total of 267,982 employee participants from the surveyed industries attended training courses provided by the establishment (including courses organised by the establishment or in conjunction with other institutions, and those sponsored by the employer), up by 26.7% year-on-year. Hotels had 264,011 participants in vocational training, with most of them taking Services courses (56.1%), followed by Business & Administration courses (37.2%); the majority of the participants attended courses during office hours. As regards course fees, over 70% of the participants from most of the industries took courses paid by the establishment, while the corresponding rate for Child-care was only 51.8%.