The Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the fourth quarter of 2024 covers Wholesale & Retail Trade; Transport, Storage & Communications; Security Activities and Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities. However, the self-employed are excluded.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that number of persons engaged in Wholesale & Retail Trade was 68,554 at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, similar to that in the same period in 2023; among them, those working in Retail trade (43,621) increased slightly by 133 (+0.3%). Besides, numbers of persons engaged in the Transport, Storage & Communications sector (15,110), Security Activities (12,920) and Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities (933) went up by 597 (+4.1%), 165 (+1.3%) and 14 (+1.5%) respectively.

Average earnings (excluding irregular remuneration) of full-time employees in all the surveyed industries, except Wholesale & Retail Trade, registered growth in December 2024. Average earnings of full-time employees in Security Activities, the Transport, Storage & Communications sector and Public Sewage & Refuse Disposal Activities were MOP14,090, MOP22,440 and MOP19,790 respectively, up by 6.7%, 2.6% and 0.9% year-on-year. On the other hand, earnings of those in Wholesale & Retail Trade (MOP14,730) edged down by 0.1%.

At the end of the fourth quarter, job vacancies in Retail Trade (1,591) went down by 829 year-on-year. The job vacancy rate (4.4%), the employee recruitment rate (2.8%) and the employee turnover rate (4.7%) decreased by 2.0, 2.6 and 0.4 percentage points respectively year-on-year, which indicated a slowdown in the demand for manpower in Retail Trade. For the Transport, Storage & Communications sector, number of job vacancies (835) increased by 56; the employee turnover rate (10.2%) and the job vacancy rate (5.8%) showed respective growth of 1.7 and 0.2 percentage points, implying that there were still many vacant posts to be filled in the sector due to the turnover of employees.