I refer to the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) Employment Situation Third Quarter report released on 31 October.
What does it mean when the overall unemployment rate drops marginally to 1.9% in September 2012 from 2.0% a quarter ago, while the unemployment rates for residents and Singapore citizens were unchanged at 2.8% and 3.0% respectively?
Well, what it may mean is that Singaporeans may be relatively worse off than foreigners and permanent residents (PRs), in terms of the rate of change of unemployment.
Who ‘really’ benefits more from employment creation?
With total employment creation of 121,400 in the last four quarters, why is it that the unemployment rate of citizens has remained unchanged, whilst the overall unemployment rate has dropped? Does this mean that the employment creation (jobs) benefited foreigners more than citizens? Did the majority of the jobs that we have been creating go to foreigners?
How many unemployed?
The seasonally adjusted figures for the number of unemployed were 59,600 for residents and 53,000 for citizens, largely unchanged from the 60,200 and 53,600 respectively in June 2012.
If we add to the above unemployed residents, the 8,600 discouraged workers, of whom nearly two in three (64%) were aged 50 & over, which were last reported in the MOM’s Labour Force 2011 report, the number of unemployed may increase to about 68,200.
Note: Discouraged workers are persons outside the labour force who were not actively looking for a job because they believed their job search would not yield results.
If we add to the above, some of the 153,600 or 14.4% of economically inactive residents in 2011 who intended to look for a job within the next two years, of whom 110,800 had work experience, the number of ‘actual’ unemployed may be higher.
If we add to the above the number who may be undergoing training and may thus not be classified as unemployed, the number of ‘actual’ unemployed may be higher.
What it means to be unemployed?
In a country which has no unemployment benefits, and hardly any welfare benefits when citizens are unemployed and in financial difficulties, just looking at the number of unemployed or the official unemployment rate may be quite meaningless, from the perspective of an unemployed person.
Under-employed?
Actually, perhaps a larger issue for some Singaporeans may be that of being ‘under-employed’. By this I am referring to those who are employed, but may only be able to get a part-time job, a much lower paying job, free-lancing other than as a matter of choice, etc.
In this connection, there are about 177,000 freelancers in Singapore (“NTUC to set up legal clinic for freelance professionals”, New Paper, Oct 31).
Redundancy increase 49%
An estimated 3,300 workers were made redundant in the third quarter of 2012, compared to 2,210 in the previous quarter. This is the highest number of redundancy since the second quarter of 2009.
Employment growth slowing
“Preliminary estimates show that total employment grew by 24,900 in the third quarter of 2012, down from the increase of 31,900 in the same period last year and 31,700 in the second quarter of 2012”.
Leong Sze Hian
