MACAO, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- The general unemployment rate in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) was 2.0 percent last year, up by 0.1 percentage point year-on-year, the SAR government's statistics service said on Friday.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that for the whole year of 2017, the unemployment rate of local residents was 2.7 percent, the same as in 2016. Median monthly employment earnings of the employed (15,000 patacas) stayed flat year-on-year, while those of the employed residents (19,000 patacas) increased by 1,000. patacas.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the general unemployment rate (1.9 percent) and the unemployment rate of local residents (2.5 percent) decreased by 0.1 and 0.2 percentage points respectively from the previous quarter.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the total number of the the employed decreased by 5,300 quarter-to-quarter. Analysed by industry, employment in construction (28,600) dropped by 3,700 while that in transport, Storage and Communications (21,600) rose by 2,400.

The unemployment rate for October-December 2017 held stable as in the previous period (September-November 2017) at 1.9 percent; the underemployment rate was 0.3 percent, down by 0.1 percentage point. (One U.S. dollar equals 8.04 patacas)