Some 86,510 migrant workers worked in the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) in January 2008, an increase of 19,741 workers over the same period of 2007, the Macao Daily News reported on Monday.

Over 50 percent of Macao's migrant workers came from the Chinese mainland in January 2008, the number of which stood at 48,077, and those from Hong Kong came second, with a total number of 13,531, which was slightly lower than December 2007, according to the daily, quoting statistics released by the Labor Affairs Bureau (DSAL) of the SAR government.

The report also said that as many of the large-scale casino resort projects completed by the end of 2007, Macao's construction and service industries has reduced their employment of migrant workers, which led to the decrease of Hong Kong workers who mostly were employed by companies in these business sectors.

Besides the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, a large part of the migrant workers also came from other Asian countries including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Vietnam and Thailand, according to the DSAL.

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2008)