The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the first quarter of 2017. 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 2017, Hotels had 54,439 full-time employees, up by 9.7% year-on-year; average earnings (excluding bonuses) of full-time employees in March rose by 4.0% to MOP17,010. Restaurants had 24,995 full-time employees, down by 3.9% year-on-year, with the average earnings rising by 1.6% to MOP9,280.
Manufacturing had 9,830 full-time employees, an increase of 8.3% year-on-year; average earnings in March rose by 4.9% to MOP10,790. Electricity, Gas & Water Supply had 1,112 full-time employees, up by 3.2% from a year earlier; average earnings grew by 3.4% to MOP29,960.
Insurance had 548 full-time employees, up by 6.8% year-on-year; average earnings in March rose by 8.4% to MOP26,770. Financial Intermediation Activities had 407 full-time employees, a year-on-year increase of 2.5%, with the average earnings rising by 4.9% to MOP14,250.
Child-care and Elderly Care had 1,312 and 675 full-time employees respectively, up by 9.6% and 2.1% year-on-year; average earnings in March increased by 6.9% and 0.7% respectively to MOP14,320 and MOP13,840.
At the end of the first quarter, job vacancies in Hotels (1,929) rose by 645 year-on-year, while those in Restaurants (2,030) and Manufacturing (712) fell by 755 and 687 respectively. About 79.3% of the vacancies in Manufacturing and 65.3% of those in Restaurants merely required junior secondary education or lower. All of the vacancies in Financial Intermediation Activities required knowledge of Mandarin; meanwhile, 73.2% and 57.8% of the vacancies in Hotels required knowledge of Mandarin and English respectively.
In the first quarter, the employee recruitment rate (4.2%), job vacancy rate (3.4%) and the employee turnover rate (4.2%) in Hotels rose by 0.8, 0.9 and 0.3 percentage points respectively year-on-year, implying that there were still vacancies available to be filled. In Restaurants, the employee recruitment rate (6.6%) increased by 0.1 percentage point year-on-year, while the job vacancy rate (7.5%) and employee turnover rate (4.3%) fell by 2.2 and 1.2 percentage points respectively, indicating that the manpower situation in the industry has improved.
In the first quarter, a total of 144,028 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 58.9% year-on-year. Hotels had 140,762 participants in vocational training, with the majority attending courses in Services (50.0%) and Business & Administration (38.8%); besides, 99.1% of the participants attended courses during office hours. Meanwhile, over 70% of the participants from most of the industries attended courses paid by the establishment, while the corresponding rate in Child-care was 45.3%.