MACAO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The general unemployment rate in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) remained stable at 1.9 percent for the first quarter of this year, compared with that of the previous period from December last year to February, the SAR's statistics service said on Friday.
Information from the Statistics and Census Service also indicated that the unemployment rate of local residents was 2.6 percent and the underemployment rate was 0.6 percent for the first quarter, up by 0.1 and 0.2 percentage points respectively from the previous period.
Total labour force was 388,000 and the labour force participation rate was 70.6 percent. Total employment was 380,500 and the number of employed residents totalled 280,100, up by 2,200 and 1,600 respectively from the previous period.
The number of the unemployed was 7,500, up by 300 from the previous period. Fresh labour force entrants searching for their first job accounted for 6.8 percent of the total unemployed, down by 0.9 percentage points.
In the first quarter of 2018, the total employment increased by 4,600 quarter-to-quarter, of which the number of employed residents went up by 3,700.
Analysed by industry, employment in gaming and junket activities (83,000) and hotels, restaurants and similar activities (56,000) rose by 3,500 and 1,800 respectively, while that in the transport, storage and communications sector (19,300) decreased by 2,300.
Median monthly employment earnings of the employed in the first quarter increased by 500 patacas quarter-to-quarter to 16,000 patacas. Moreover, median earnings of the employed residents grew by 1,000 patacas quarter-to-quarter to 20,000 patacas. (One U.S. dollar equals to 8.03 patacas)
