Number of Macau residents employed in gaming falls to lowest recorded since 1Q 2013
The number of Macau residents employed in the city’s gaming sector fell by 3,800, or 5.8 percent, between the first and third quarters of 2026, according to employment survey data published on Friday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The third-quarter tally was the lowest since the burea…
The number of Macau residents employed in the city’s gaming sector fell by 3,800, or 5.8 percent, between the first and third quarters of 2026, according to employment survey data published on Friday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The third-quarter tally was the lowest since the bureau’s quarterly-data series on employed residents began in the first quarter of 2013. The tally declined from 65,900 in the first quarter of 2026 to 63,200 in the second, and 62,100 in the three months to September 30. The latest figure was down 1.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 3.4 percent from 64,300 a year earlier. The decline seen this year in the number of residents employed in the gaming industry came after Macau’s satellite casino model was phased out at the end of 2025. In June last year, the Macau government said about 5,600 local employees worked at satellite venues, of whom about 4,800 were employed by gaming concessionaires and about 800 were hired directly by satellite casino operators. The latest employment survey does not identify how many former satellite casino staff left the gaming sector. Gaming accounted for 21.7 percent of Macau’s 285,600 employed residents in the third quarter this year, according to the data. That compared with 23.0 percent of the city’s employed residents in the first quarter of 2026. The share of unemployed residents looking for a new job who had previously worked in gaming rose from 13.3 percent in the first quarter to 14.4 percent in the second and 19.5 percent in the third, the data showed. Across industries, the most commonly cited reasons for unemployment in the third quarter were personal or family reasons (33.5 percent), the end of a temporary job or contract (20.1 percent) and dismissal or layoff (16.5 percent). Median monthly earnings for Macau residents working in gaming were MOP22,000 (US$2,723) in the third quarter, unchanged from the second quarter and down from MOP25,000 in the first three months of 2026.