Macau Business | June 2024
Keith Morrison – Author and educationist
You may have watched America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Talent, Australia’s Got Talent. In fact, many countries have their own similar reality shows. But put those aside, because now Macau’s got talent. It’s true. Not the ear-splitting glitzy singers, endearing little children, dancers, magicians, and comedic acrobats. No, Macau can do better than these; Macau’s got real talent. Reportedly, Macau is good at science, engineering, and technology. On top of this, it needs even more people with expertise in high-tech, computer science and applications, big health, and finance.
The Macau government is reported to be offering a financial incentive to local ‘high-end talents’ to stay in Macau, along with attracting international experts. As the Secretary for Social affairs and Culture was reported to have said recently: ‘We welcome scientific and technological talent from around the world to come to Macau to set up businesses and facilitate development’. Add to this, bursting with life and excitement, is Macau’s Talents Development Committee’s alluring comment that its ‘website provides high-paying job vacancies in five major occupational categories, including: corporate executives, professionals, highly skilled talents and applied talents. The salary of the vacancies is not lower than the median of the relevant occupational categories announced by the Bureau of Statistics.’ Yawn.
Maybe the Talents Development Committee is disappointed that it has not recruited anyone who meets its eligibility criterion of having a Nobel prize, the Fields medal, the Turing Award, or the Shaw prize. So, Macau is turning to its own talents, paying them to stay, though reportedly offering them only ‘slightly more’ cash. Such incentives overlook the elephant in the room, even though several hundred applications are reported to have been received. And what is that elephant? Read on.
Whilst the endeavours of the Macau government are clearly well intentioned, the lack of suitably qualified and experienced workers in the identified key areas of need raises several questions. For example, how is it that the thousands of local students who graduate each year from Macau’s higher education institutions with Master’s and doctorate, and undergraduate degrees in the areas of need, are unsuitable for meeting the local needs, or who decide to work outside Macau, or to work in other employment? Why do local, highly talented people leave Macau or do not return from overseas? Why are suitably experienced international workers not only difficult to recruit but also difficult to retain? Why don’t they want to come to, or stay in, Macau?
In conducting a situational analysis of work opportunities, it is important to look at not only the upside of Macau, but also its downside. On the one hand, Macau is a safe city, most of its residents are delightful, it has some interesting sites, its low tax rate is attractive, and, for senior staff, it pays well. On the other hand, and this is the elephant in the room: (i) career development prospects are very limited in terms of promotion and diversity, with narrow fields of employment; (ii) many of its work cultures are over-hierarchical and over-authoritarian, with handed-down instructions for workers to obey compliantly; (iii) the labyrinthine bureaucracy of visas, work permits, and residency status is forbidding; (iv) government intrusion into private enterprises is oppressive; (v) Macau is monstrously overcrowded with both residents and tourists; (vi) it is a noisy, light-polluted, concrete jungle that lacks countryside and a nature-friendly environment, and its back streets are filthy and congested; (vii) accommodation is expensive; (viii) job security of international workers is fragile (they can be fired at the drop of a hat, as happened when thousands were kicked out at two weeks’ notice in the Covid-19 pandemic); (ix) with only a few exceptions, its mass schooling is like turning back the clock 50+ years; (x) health services are suspect (people go outside Macau for diagnosis and treatment); (xi) Macau has become more geared to tourists than to its locals; (xii) Macau’s residents have few societal and community benefits from the massive gaming income.
The point here is that offering people cash to stay in Macau or to come to it for work pales into relative insignificance when balanced with quality of life, i.e. things that cash cannot buy. Macau seems to have talent in offering disincentives.
