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100 Gibraltar jobs lost as gambling sector goes downhill
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by PANORAMA reporter
The situation in Gibraltar's lucrative gambling sector is on a downhill trend, and with it, the number of people employed by gaming companies.
Total number of employees between October 2007 and August 2008 was static, but figures for last month shows a reduction from 1803 to 1699 during this period.
What has saved a more sombre picture developing has been that a number of companies have increased their staff for one reason or another.
But leading players in the industry, such as PartyGaming and Mansion, have gone down in numbers, as was being predicted last year.
In September last year there were reports that PartyGaming was looking at making about 100 staff redundant.
It is confirmed that the PartyGaming workforce is now down to 227 from 317 in August last year and 335 the previous year.
In the wake of the PartyGaming negative news reported last year, later reports said that Mansion were also planning cuts.
At the time a Mansion spokesman told us that their IT team was being reduced but tried to balance the nega-tive news by adding that 'people were being recruited for sales and marketing.'
The situation at Mansion is that their staff numbers have gone down from 149 to 93 last month.
Other companies on a downhill are Victor Chandler whose staff reduced from 307 to 262 last year, although it has picked up somewhat to 275 last month.
A company that has shown a particularly sharp decrease in staff is 32 Red from 117 to 45 last month.
Bwin went up to 200 last year and down to 177 last month.
Another company, 888 Holdings, also shows a slight reducing trend over the period.
Others, like Carmen Media, who are a smaller company, have gone down from 25 to 14, which again paints a gloomy picture.
Out of this reducing trend, the number of Gibraltarians employed in online gambling has gone down from 360 in October 2007 to 284 last August and now to 261 - representing a loss of 100 jobs over the period.
As already mentioned there are those who have been on an uptrend, notably Stan James, of the larger companies, from 194 in October 2007 to 237 in August last year to 253 last month.
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