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31


GRAPH 4 - Median monthly earnings by occupation (Patacas)


22,500 Overall Median 17,500


Legislators, senior offi cials, directors and managers of companies


Professionals


Technicians and associate professionals


12,500 Clerks Services and sales workers


Skilled agricultural and fi shery workers


7,500 Craftsmen and smiliar workers 2,500 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010


Plant and machine operators, drivers and assemblers Unskilled workers


Income trends


Another issue in studying the workforce is the evolution of monthly earnings. As in ation has increased over the past decade, the government introduced a series of handouts. The  gures do not suggest, however, that most of the population has seen its real income diminish or that workers have become markedly poorer.


GRAPH 4


Median income shot up by more than 80 percent between 1999 and 2010. That represents an average growth of 5.6 percent a year, well above annual increases in the consumer price index during the same period. Omitting unskilled workers from the analysis, the greatest relative increases in income were among less quali ed workers. Median incomes for two blue- collar categories – craftsmen; and plant and machine operators, drivers and assemblers – more than doubled between 1999 and 2010. Salaries for the latter group almost tripled.


GRAPH 5 - Changes to the average of median monthly earnings (Patacas)


25,000 20,000


15,000


10,000 5,000


0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010


Overall average Legislators, senior offi cials, directors and mangers of companies


Overall average - standard deviation Overall average + standard deviation Unskilled workers


GRAPH 5


Analysing the spread of incomes for selected occupations, there are two stand-out categories of jobs. Graph Five plots the average of median incomes for all occupations in Macau and one standard deviation above and below it during the period from 1999 to 2010. It reveals that median incomes for the category that includes legislators, senior of cials, company directors and managers increased substantially, while the median income of unskilled workers was more than one standard deviation less than the mean.


That suggests a relative convergence in incomes for most job categories and an increasingly big gap between Macau’s highest paid and most poorly paid.


GRAPH 6


GRAPH 6 - Growth in the average monthly earnings between 1999 and 2010 by occupation (%)


200 160


180


100 120 140


80 60


40 20 0


Legislators, senior offi cials, directors and managers of companies


Professionals Technicians and


associate professionals Clerks


Services and sales


workers Skilled


agricultural and


fi shery workers


Craftsmen and


similar workers


Plant and machine operators, drivers and assemblers


Unskilled workers


Excluding the relatively small number of skilled agricultural and  shery workers from our analysis, the  nal graph suggests that relative to other occupations, the incomes of professionals have increased the least between 1999 and 2010. Their median income rose by 17 percent. The  nding suggests a version of the middle-class squeeze is playing out in Macau.


JANUARY 2012


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