Asians account for 7% of Pa. casino workers

Asians account for 7% of Pa. casino workers
By DONALD GILLILAND, The Patriot-News

Last year was the year of the Asian at Pennsylvania’s casinos.

The advent of table games — and conscious marketing to Asian populations — spurred a hiring boom that increased the Asian share of casino jobs by 5 percent.

For the first time, Asians appear as a stand-alone demographic in the Gaming Control Board’s annual diversity report.

Previously — because the number of Asian workers was so small — they were included in the “other” category with Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and other less-represented races.

No more.

Asians now account for more than 7 percent of casino workers statewide, surpassing Hispanics who maintained a 5 percent share of the employment.

African Americans account for nearly 12 percent of casino employees, while the proportion of Caucasians dropped from 82 percent in June 2010 to 75 percent one year later.

That’s proportionately speaking. In raw numbers, Caucasians still landed the greatest number of jobs during the table games hiring boom with an increase of more than 3,000.

In raw numbers, more than 900 African Americans were hired, more than 770 Asians and more than 250 Hispanics.

But proportions matter, especially in the big southeastern casinos.

At Parx Casino in suburban Philadelphia, one in every six employees is Asian.

That’s higher than in the general population of Pennsylvania’s most heavily Asian gaming markets — Philadelphia and Montgomery counties, where one in every 16 is Asian.

That’s because casinos like Parx and the Sands in Bethlehem are drawing heavily on the Asian communities in the New York City region.

Parx spokeswoman Carrie Nork Minelli said table games changed the customer demographics of casinos in many ways. Table games tend to skew younger and male, but they also attract Asians.

There’s a “long standing cultural history of gambling in Asian societies,” according to Dr. Timothy Fong, co-director of the gambling studies program at UCLA, and research shows a higher propensity for gambling among Asian-Americans. Casinos know that and have begun catering to the market.

Parx has an Asian gaming area with a noodle bar. It has buses running every day from New York City, with a stop in Chinatown.

And it is advertising in Asian language newspapers and sending out Asian-language mailings, most recently invitations to its upcoming $50,000 baccarat tournament.

Gaming Control Board spokesman Richard McGarvey said some casinos have specifically catered to their Asian clientele “and they hired for that purpose.”

Diversity in hiring is an explicit goal of the gaming law in Pennsylvania. Ironically, the Gaming Control Board has less diversity than the casinos it regulates.

According to the agency’s recent annual report, only 14.5 percent of its employees are minorities, compared to 25 percent minority employment at casinos.

“The Gaming Control Board has worked hard since its inception to develop a diverse workforce,” said McGarvey. “In fact, the agency’s minority representation has been and continues to be greater than the average minority representation throughout the commonwealth state agencies.”