Inside Asian Gaming

June 2014 inside asian gaming 21 attraction as their top concern in a widely reported survey by US insurance broker and risk management consultant Marsh LLC. Mr Choudhary estimates the next phase of Cotai expansion will require 32,000 gaming and hotel employees over and above the current labor force of 85,000. With Macau’s unemployment running at 1.7% and a small pool of higher-education graduates joining the labor force every year, and with croupier positions off limits to migrant workers as a matter of government policy, he forecasts a shortfall of more than 13,800 workers, even with productivity improvements and personnel shifts within the industry. He suggests that unless the labor issue is resolved, new Cotai resorts could be forced to open with just 100 gaming tables while facing higher labor costs, leading to a double-digit cut in Morgan Stanley’s first-year valuations for each new property. There’s likely to be no shortage of bad news headlines, meaningful or otherwise, as Macau moves forward. Mr Ossolinski urges the industry to set up rapid response teams to quash rumors and put bad news in perspective whenever it happens. “Investors, media, and the general public outside of Macau should not have to wait for the next gaming industry trade event to hear senior management put the rumors and so-called bad news into perspective,” he says. “They could do a better job of managing the message.” Editor at Large Muhammad Cohen also blogs for Forbes on gaming throughout Asia and wrote “Hong Kong on Air,” a novel set during the 1997 handover about TV news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie. He can be contacted at mcohen@asgam.com. Macau gaming executives cite labor retention and attraction as their top concern in a widely reported survey by US insurance broker and risk management consultant Marsh LLC.