Macao's labor shortage has dimmed its prospect of being transformed into a 24-hour tourism destination, and local authorities should consider and adopt effective foreign labor policy to tackle the issue, said a survey report released on Wednesday.

Based on the ratio differences in the 5 sectors and the working population figure of Macao in 2006, the island city would need another 156,000 new workers to sustain the kind of round-the-clock operation as found in Las Vegas, according to the report.

The survey was conducted by the Institute For Tourism Studies (IFT), which was commissioned by the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR (Special Administration Region) to carry out a study on manpower assessment and needs for Macao as a 24-hour tourism destination.

The survey focused on the island city's five major sectors, including hotel and gambling, wholesale and retail, transportation and communication, education and health care, and public administration and social security. It also compared the current labor distribution and visitor arrivals between Macao and Las Vegas, which is already a round-the-clock tourism destination.

The report said that among the five sectors, the hotel and gambling sector would have the highest demand of new blood, with an estimation of around 66,000, followed by wholesale and retail ( about 33,000) and public administration and social security (about 30,500).

The report also noted that, according to the estimation of economists and analysts, every direct vacancy in a major industry will have a multiplying effect of producing 1.5 indirect vacancies.

Macao, a city with around 530,000 residents, welcomed more than 27 million visitors in 2007, and gaming taxes accounted for 75 percent of the SAR government's revenue last year. However, under local government regulations, certain types of job positions in the city's casinos, such as croupier, are limited only to local residents.

(Xinhua News Agency May 1, 2008)