The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the first quarter of 2014. Survey coverage comprises Manufacturing; Hotels & Restaurants; 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 2014, Hotels & Restaurants had 67,430 full-time employees, up by 4.3% year-on-year, with those working in Restaurants (22,782) rising by 14.1%. In March, average earnings (excluding bonuses and allowances) of full-time employees in Hotels rose by 9.7% year-on-year to MOP15,160; those working in Restaurants earned an average of MOP8,510, up by 5.2%.

Manufacturing had 9,412 full-time employees, down by 8.0% year-on-year. Average earnings of full-time employees in March rose by 13.6% year-on-year to MOP8,960. Electricity, Gas & Water Supply had 1,082 full-time employees, and their average earnings increased by 5.7% to MOP25,940.

Financial Intermediation Activities had 6,333 full-time employees, up by 2.1% year-on-year, those working in Banking (5,489) rising by 2.3%. Average earnings of full-time employees in Banking rose by 5.8% to MOP22,560.

Child-care and Elderly Care had 900 and 618 full-time employees, up by 12.1% and 4.6% respectively year-on-year. In March, average earnings of full-time employees in Child-care increased by 5.8% to MOP10,880; those working in Elderly Care earned an average of MOP10,680, up by 7.9%.

At the end of the first quarter of 2014, Hotels and Restaurants had 2,976 and 3,016 vacancies, up by 890 and 909 respectively year-on-year; vacancies in Manufacturing decreased by 125 to 1,135.

In terms of recruitment prerequisites, 82.6% of the vacancies in Financial Intermediation Activities required knowledge of Mandarin, while 95.5% of those in Insurance required English; meanwhile, 82.6% and 58.5% of the vacancies in Hotels required knowledge of Mandarin and English respectively.

In the first quarter of 2014, Restaurants had the highest vacancy rate of 11.7%, up by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year, and the employee turnover rate (7.5%) rose by 0.6 percentage points. The vacancy rate in Manufacturing fell slightly by 0.2 percentage points, but remained high at 10.8%, while the employee turnover rate (5.3%) rose by 0.3 percentage points. This indicated that most of the vacancies in these industries were not filled and the turnover of employees has not significantly improved.

As regards vocational training in the surveyed industries, a total of 21,365 participants attended training courses which were provided by the establishment in the first quarter of 2014 (including courses organized by the establishment or in conjunction with other institutions, and those sponsored by the employer); 82.4% of the elderly care institutions and 64.3% of the banks provided training courses for their employees. Moreover, 64.0% of the participants working in Child-care and Elderly Care attended courses paid by the establishment, while the rate for other industries was over 90%. Analyzed by course type, most of the courses (69.2%) were in Services, and Business & Administration. Hotels had 15,024 participants attending vocational training, with 98.8% taking courses during office hours; meanwhile, Banking had 3,875 participants and 75.1% of them attended courses during non-office hours.