LONDON: The labor market of China’s Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) kept stable in July, August and September as its general unemployment rate for that period stood at 2.0 percent, the same as the previous quarter, the SAR’s statistics department said on Friday. Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that both the general unemployment rate (2.0 percent) and the unemployment rate of local residents (2.7 percent) for the third quarter of 2017 remained stable as in the second quarter. The underemployment rate was 0.6 percent, up by 0.1 percentage point. Total labor force was 388,900 and the labor force participation rate stood at 71.0 percent. Total employment was 381,200 and employed residents totaled 281,200, down by 3,000 and 2,600 respectively from the previous period.
DSEC data also showed that the number of the unemployed was 7,700, a decrease of 200; fresh labor force entrants searching for their first job accounted for 14.8 percent of the total unemployed, down by 2.4 percentage points. Total employment decreased by 1,100 quarter-to-quarter, with employed residents aged 25-34 dropping by 1,700.
