The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages of Financial Activities for the first quarter of 2021. The Survey covers the Banking Sector, Other Financial Intermediation, Insurance and Activities Auxiliary to Financial Intermediation, including financial institutions supervised by the Monetary Authority of Macao, but excluding insurance agents and brokers not directly employed by insurance companies.

At the end of the first quarter of 2021, Financial Activities had 8,196 full-time employees; average earnings (excluding bonuses) of full-time employees in March 2021 were MOP29,100, down by 1.5% year-on-year.

The Banking Sector had 6,985 full-time employees, an increase of 2.6% year-on-year; their average earnings in March fell by 2.7% to MOP29,630. Other Financial Intermediation had 248 full-time employees, up by 2.9% year-on-year, with their average earnings rising by 13.2% to MOP27,780.

Insurance had 668 full-time employees, up by 4.5% year-on-year; their average earnings in March edged up by 0.1% to MOP30,220.

Number of full-time employees in Activities Auxiliary to Financial Intermediation went down by 15.7% year-on-year to 295, while their average earnings in March rose by 8.2% to MOP15,180. 

At the end of the first quarter, job vacancies in Financial Activities decreased by 105 year-on-year to 274, with vacancies in the Banking Sector (229) and Insurance (23) dropping by 99 and 4 respectively. More than 90% of the vacancies in Financial Activities required knowledge of Mandarin and English, whereas 98.7% and 95.7% of the vacancies in the Banking Sector and Insurance required tertiary education.

With respect to the Banking Sector, number of new recruits (156) was similar to that of employees leaving employment (146) in the first quarter. The employee recruitment rate (2.2%) and the job vacancy rate (3.2%) dropped by 0.3 and 1.4 percentage points respectively year-on-year, indicating a decrease in demand for manpower in the Banking Sector in this quarter.

During the first quarter, a total of 9,413 employee participants from Financial Activities attended training courses provided by the establishment (including courses organised by the establishment or in conjunction with other institutions, and those sponsored by the establishment), an upsurge of 55.0% year-on-year. Number of vocational training participants from the Banking Sector reached 9,091, and most of them took Business and Administration courses (63.4%), followed by Law courses (23.0%); in addition, 50.9% of the participants from the sector attended courses during non-office hours. As regards course fees, over 70% of the participants from Financial Activities took courses paid by the establishment.