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Singapore’s Q3 resident employment surges by 43,200; MOM now ‘cautiously optimistic’
SINGAPORE’S resident employment staged a strong rebound in the third quarter of 2020, lifting resident employment levels to near pre-pandemic levels, Ministry of Manpower (MOM) officials said on Thursday as they expressed “cautious optimism” about the labour market.
Resident employment jumped 43,200 to 2.34 million in September, which is just a notch below September 2019 figure of 2.35 million, according to the Labour Market Report Q3 2020.
Non-resident employment, excluding foreign domestic workers, however, contracted by 72,300 in Q3, even more sharply than the first half of the year. This led to a contraction of 29,100 in total employment for Q3, easing from the contraction of 103,800 in Q2, when Singapore was on a partial economic shutdown.
As a result, nearly nine in 10 of the total employment decline of 158,700 in the first three quarters of the year is now due to non-residents. Resident employment fell by 19,600 during this period.
The construction and manufacturing sectors saw the largest contraction in employment in Q3 at 16,700 and 15,000 respectively, due to a decline in foreign employment, even though manufacturing has been widely seen as a bright spot in the Republic’s economic recovery.
Retrenchments rose by 9,120 in Q3, compared with 8,130 in the previous quarter, surpassing all past recessionary peaks other than that for the 2009 Global Financial Crisis. This was attributed to higher retrenchments in the arts, entertainment and recreation as well as air transport-related industries, MOM said.
Overall and citizen unemployment rates were 3.6 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively in October, unchanged from September. Resident unemployment inched up from 4.7 per cent to 4.8 per cent during this period.
Explaining why the resident unemployment rate grew even as resident employment increased, Ang Boon Heng, director of manpower research and statistics at MOM, said: “It reflects retrenched workers that are out there looking for work, and it also reflects that as the economy is improving, as the labour market is improving, more people would want to come back to the labour force to look for work.”
On the whole, the ministry is “cautiously optimistic” about Singapore’s labour market in the coming months, although the recovery may not be smooth-sailing, he said.
Aubeck Kam, permanent secretary at MOM, said there will still be “considerable uncertainty”.
“The labour market tends to lag developments in GDP (gross domestic product) growth, so if the economy recovers, the labour market will likely recover but at a delayed pace because initially, employers will have a lot of excess capacity,” said Mr Kam.
Meanwhile, from April to October, nearly 60,000 job seekers have been placed into jobs and skills opportunities under the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package, according to the 16th edition of the Jobs Situation Report. Of these, 47,400 were placed into jobs, MOM said, exceeding its original target of 40,000.
“This is a positive sign because when we conceived of the SGUnited Jobs and Skills opportunities, we knew that job seekers would more naturally prefer to take on jobs, which offer more stability, as compared to traineeships or to take up training opportunities,” said Mr Kam.
As at end-October, more than 123,000 opportunities in jobs and training are available for job seekers, with about three in four of these being in jobs. The information and communications sector has both the highest number of available job openings and company-hosted traineeships, attachments and trainings – at 21,000 in total.
Source: https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/singapores-q3-resident-employment-surges-by-43200-mom-now-cautiously-optimistic