Macau, China, Sept. 4, 2024 (Lusa) - Macau announced on Wednesday that it employed more than 182,000 non-resident workers at the end of July, the highest figure since August 2020.
According to data from the Public Security Police Force, the Chinese special administrative region had 182,307 non-resident workers, 1,999 more than at the end of June.
The statistics, released today by the Labour Affairs Bureau, show that more than 5,600 non-resident workers have been hired in Macau since the beginning of the year.
The hotel and catering sector was the one that hired the most this year, gaining 1,431 non-resident workers, followed by casinos and cultural and recreational activities (808 more) and domestic workers (769 more).
The hotel and restaurant sector had been the hardest hit by the loss of labour during the pandemic, having laid off more than 17,600 non-resident employees since December 2019.
The city has lost almost 45,000 non-residents (11.3% of the labour force) since the peak of 196,538 reached at the end of 2019, at the beginning of the pandemic.
By January 2023, the labour force from abroad, including mainland China, had fallen to less than 152,000, the lowest number since April 2014.
Since January 2023, the number of non-resident workers in Macau has increased by almost 30,400.
The number of non-resident workers has been rising for 18 months in a row, reaching its highest level since August 2020 at the end of July.
Like China, Macau followed the ‘zero covid' policy and reopened its borders to all foreigners, including non-resident workers, on 8 January 2023 after almost three years of strict restrictions.
With the end of the ‘zero covid’ policy, the city welcomed more than 19.7 million tourists in the first seven months of 2024, 37% more than in the same period last year. The hotel occupancy rate was 84.6%, an increase of 4.9 percentage points year-on-year.
On Sunday, the Tourist Office announced that Macau received almost 3.7 million visitors in August, a higher figure than in the same month of 2019, for the first time since the end of the pandemic.
The economic crisis caused by the pandemic led to the unemployment rate reaching 4% in the third quarter of 2022, the highest figure since 2006.
But despite the rise in the number of non-resident workers, the unemployment rate fell to 1.7% in the second quarter of this year, equalling the historic low of 1.7% before the pandemic began.
According to official figures, Macau's economy grew by 15.7% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year, thanks to the upturn in gaming.
Gross domestic product (GDP) represented 86.2% of the figure recorded in the first half of 2019 before the pandemic began.
VQ/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
