The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the third quarter of 2018. 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 third quarter of 2018, Hotels had 58,255 full-time employees, up by 6.8% year-on-year; average earnings (excluding bonuses) of full-time employees in September rose by 4.9% to MOP18,040. Restaurants had 25,384 full-time employees, down by 1.9% year-on-year, with the average earnings rising by 5.5% to MOP9,790.
Manufacturing had 9,544 full-time employees, a decrease of 3.2% year-on-year; average earnings in September rose by 9.5% to MOP11,750. Electricity, Gas & Water Supply had 1,118 full-time employees, remaining unchanged from a year earlier, with the average earnings dropping by 6.0% to MOP32,190.
Insurance had 594 full-time employees, up by 6.5% year-on-year; average earnings in September rose by 3.1% to MOP27,570. Financial Intermediation Activities had 412 full-time employees, a year-on-year increase of 2.0%, with the average earnings falling by 1.7% to MOP14,770.
Child-care and Elderly Care had 1,473 and 810 full-time employees respectively, up by 4.5% and 7.7% year-on-year; average earnings in September increased by 4.4% and 10.9% respectively to MOP15,320 and MOP15,610.
At the end of the third quarter, the number of vacant posts in Hotels (2,436) and Restaurants (2,319) rose by 215 and 147 respectively year-on-year. Moreover, 75.8% of the vacancies in Manufacturing and 57.1% of those in Elderly Care merely required junior secondary education or lower. All of the vacancies in Financial Intermediation Activities required knowledge of English; meanwhile, 72.6% and 42.9% of the vacancies in Hotels required knowledge of Mandarin and English respectively.
In the third quarter, the employee recruitment rate (6.4%) and the employee turnover rate (5.2%) of Hotels rose by 0.3 and 0.5 percentage points respectively year-on-year, implying the workforce in this industry was relatively stable. For Restaurants, the employee turnover rate (5.7%) fell by 0.8 percentage points, while the job vacancy rate (8.4%) and the employee recruitment rate (5.9%) grew by 0.7 and 0.5 percentage points respectively, indicating a slight improvement in employee turnover in the industry.
In the third quarter, a total of 241,250 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 8.2% year-on-year. Hotels had 236,751 participants in vocational training, with most of them attending Services courses (48.5%), followed by Business & Administration courses (40.1%); the majority of the participants attended courses during office hours. Meanwhile, over 80% of the participants from most of the industries attended courses paid by the establishment, while the corresponding rate in Child-care was only 33.6%.