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[inflationista]

some employment news from bloomberg:

By Sophie Leung

Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Macau’s unemployment rate declined to an 11-month low, as gambling industry revenue jumped on the 10th anniversary of the former Portuguese enclave’s return to Chinese rule.

The jobless rate for the three months ended Nov. 30 slid to 3.3 percent from 3.5 percent in the previous period, the Statistics and Census Service said today on its Web site.

Macau’s government in 2002 opened up the gambling industry and ended the monopoly that had been held by gaming magnate Stanley Ho and his son Lawrence Ho, boosting revenue that has been channeled into education and infrastructure. China’s President Hu Jintao urged Macau to diversify its economy in a speech earlier this month.

“Macau has allotted more money coming from the gaming boom to education expansion. A lot of colleges have opened up in last 10 years,” Michael Degolyer, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University, said in a phone interview today. The city’s labor market outlook is “quite good,” he said.

Macau’s economy expanded 8.2 percent from a year earlier in the three months through Sept. 30, snapping a nine-month long run of declines.

New Campus

The Chinese central government in June approved Macau to have jurisdiction over a new campus of the University of Macau, the city’s largest college, on Hengqin Island in the southern city of Zhuhai in mainland China.

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, expected to be completed in 2015, will “greatly enhance transport in the Pearl River Delta Region and the integration of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau,” Macau’s former Chief Executive Edmund Hosaid on Dec. 15. The bridge will “make a substantial impact” on Macau as a transport and conference center in Asia, Degolyer said.

“The central government has expanded Macau, they have literally allotted Macau additional territory,” said Degolyer. China’s State Council, the nation’s cabinet, approved a plan to reclaim 362 hectares of land from sea last month.

The city government will reserve some of the land for public projects “that would benefit the diversification of Macao’s economy,” it said in a statement Nov. 29.

The decline in Macau’s exports slowed to 40.4 percent in November from a year earlier, after slumping 49.8 percent in October, the government said today in a separate release. Imports climbed 0.4 percent, leaving a trade deficit of 2.78 billion pataca ($350 million).

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aYBihVBXyOao