Chee Soon Juan misunderstood MOM data

I refer to the article “Chee misunderstood MOM data, painted ‘alarmist picture’ of jobs market: Ministry” (Channel NewsAsia, May 5).

It states that “the increase in local employment that Dr Chee refers to is not the total number of new jobs taken by locals in 2015. It refers instead to the difference between total number of locals entering jobs and those leaving jobs, for example owing to retirement, MOM stated.

“This difference, or the ‘net’ number of new jobs taken by locals, was 700 in 2015 and it does not reflect the total number of new jobs for locals,” the ministry added.”

Jobs growth is new jobs less jobs lost? 

A simplistic explanation of locals’ jobs growth is the number of new jobs created less the number of jobs lost.

So, locals’ jobs growth was 700 against 31,600 foreigners’ jobs growth last year.

50,770 new PRs/citizens granted?

However, this may have to be seen in the light that there were 20,815 new citizens, and 29,955 new Permanent Residents (PRs) granted  in 2015.

What happened to the “foreign workers” who became “local workers”?

Even if say just 15,000 of these were working and had their residency status converted from “non-local: to “local” – shouldn’t the locals’ jobs growth have increased by at least 15,000?

Job entrants less than those who left the workforce?

As to ““The basic reality is that our local workforce growth has slowed,” the ministry said. It attributed this to smaller cohorts of younger workers entering the workforce; larger baby boomer cohorts exiting it; and Singapore’s employment rate of 80.5 per cent for residents aged 25 to 64 which is “already relatively high by international standards and cannot grow much further”.

These trends are expected to persist in the medium term due to our demographic realities, MOM said. “This is why we are stepping up efforts in industry transformation – to create not just more jobs but better quality jobs for our people,” the ministry stated.” – how is it possible the the new local entrants to the work force is almost equal to or less than the locals who retired, died whilst still working, left the work force for other reasons, migrated to work overseas, etc?

Why not give the breakdown of the statistics?