The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the first quarter of 2011. Survey coverage comprised the Manufacturing sector; Hotels & Restaurants; Insurance, Financial Intermediation Activities and Electricity, Gas & Water Supply sector, excluding own-account workers, as well as insurance agents and brokers not directly employed by insurance companies. At the end of the first quarter of 2011, the Manufacturing sector had 12,455 paid employees, down by 18.1% year-on-year, with those working in Manufacture of Textiles (843) and Manufacture of Wearing Apparel (5,270) decreasing significantly by 37.1% and 31.4% respectively. In March 2011, average earnings (excluding bonuses and allowances) of full-time employees rose by 11.8% year-on-year to MOP6,460, with Sewing machine operators earning MOP3,590 in average. Hotels & Restaurants took on 53,921 paid employees, up by 11.7% year-on-year, with 35,163 working in hotels. In March, average earnings of full-time employees rose by 7.3% year-on-year to MOP10,700. Earnings of Housekeeping staff stood at MOP6,570. The Electricity, Gas & Water Supply sector had 1,062 paid employees, up slightly by 0.5% year-on-year. The average earnings of full-time employees in March held stable from a year earlier at MOP22,240. The Insurance sector took on 452 paid employees, up by 3.9% year-on-year. The average earnings of full-time employees in March rose by 3.0% year-on-year to MOP18,750. Financial Intermediation Activities had 424 paid employees, down up by 4.1% year-on-year. In March, average earnings of full-time employees increased by 5.7% year-on-year, to MOP11,730. At the end of the first quarter of 2011, the Manufacturing sector reported 1,221 job vacancies; Hotels & Restaurants had 4,686 vacancies, while the Insurance sector and Financial Intermediation Activities had 20 and 24 vacancies respectively. In terms of recruitment prerequisites, more than 50% of the vacancies in these five industries required working experience. As regards educational attainment, 61.0% of the vacancies in the Manufacturing sector and 64.8% of those in Hotels & Restaurants required junior secondary education or lower; meanwhile, all of the vacancies in the Insurance sector and Financial Intermediation Activities required senior secondary education or higher. Besides Cantonese, Mandarin was the more preferable language skill for the vacancies in the Financial Intermediation Activities and in Hotels & Restaurants, at 100.0% and 58.0% respectively; meanwhile, for those in the Insurance sector, Financial Intermediation Activities and Hotels & Restaurants required knowledge of English at 85.0%, 60.0% and 43.1% respectively. With respect to the indicators that measure inflow and outflow of human resources, as well as staffing needs, Hotels & Restaurants had the highest employee recruitment rate (12.8%), indicating an increasing number of new recruits in this quarter; moreover, the employee turnover rate (10.1%) and job vacancy rate (9.5%) of the Manufacturing sector increased by 3.7 and 0.3 percentage points respectively year-on-year.
