The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released survey results of Manpower Needs and Wages for the fourth quarter of 2012. Survey coverage comprised Wholesale & Retail Trade; Transport, Storage & Communications; Security Activities and Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities, excluding own-account workers.

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2012, Wholesale & Retail Trade had 36,357 employees, up by 10.3% year-on-year, with 23,346 working in Retail trade. Average earnings (excluding bonuses and allowances) of full-time employees rose by 7.0% year-on-year to MOP10,880 in December 2012, with Sales representatives and Salespersons earning MOP12,100 and MOP10,230 respectively in average.

Transport, Storage & Communications took on 8,606 employees, up by 6.1% year-on-year. In December, average earnings of full-time employees increased by 5.8% year-on-year to MOP17,170. Drivers of passenger/cargo transport by land earned an average of MOP20,740.

Security Activities had 5,149 employees, up by 7.7% year-on-year. The average earnings of full-time employees in December rose by 7.4% year-on-year to MOP8,980, with Security guards earning MOP8,600 in average.

Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities had 726 employees, up by 9.5% year-on-year. The average earnings of full-time employees in December increased by 6.7% year-on-year to MOP12,720.

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2012, Wholesale & Retail Trade reported 4,238 vacancies, up by 101 year-on-year, of which 3,077 were in Retail trade. Security Activities had 948 vacancies, up by 110, while Transport, Storage & Communications offered 677 vacant posts.

In terms of recruitment prerequisites, the majority of vacancies in Wholesale & Retail Trade (52.0%) and Transport, Storage & Communications (68.2%) did not require working experience. Regarding educational attainment, 79.6% of the vacancies in Security Activities and 59.0% in Wholesale & Retail Trade required junior secondary education or lower, 45.4% of those in Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities required senior secondary education or higher, and 33.4% of those in Transport, Storage & Communications required tertiary education. Besides Cantonese, Mandarin (66.8%) and English (43.0%) were more preferable language skill in Wholesale & Retail Trade, while 40.9% of those in Transport, Storage & Communications required English.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, the employee turnover rate (7.3%) and the employee recruitment rate (8.5%) of Security Activities decreased by 5.5 and 3.8 percentage points year-on-year, and the job vacancy rate rose by 0.7 percentage points to 15.8%, indicating that the outflow of human resources showed improvement but many of the vacancies were unoccupied still.