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Decline in number of job vacancies in Q3

SINGAPORE — The number of job openings has moderated after rising for four consecutive quarters, showed the labour market report for the third quarter released yesterday.

SINGAPORE — The number of job openings has moderated after rising for four consecutive quarters, showed the labour market report for the third quarter released yesterday.

The number of vacancies fell over the quarter by 5.9 per cent to 60,700.

Still, the number of job openings continued to outnumber job seekers. The ratio of job vacancies to unemployed persons rose to 142 job openings per 100 job seekers in September from 136 in June.

Professionals, managers, executives and technician positions made up 43 per cent or 29,300 of all vacancies, followed by clerical service and sales workers (31 per cent or 20,900) and production, transport operators, cleaners and labourers (26 per cent or 17,300).

Unemployment rate for the third quarter held steady at 2 per cent overall, largely in line with preliminary figures for the period released in October. For residents — Singaporeans and permanent residents — the unemployment rate was 2.8 per cent. The unemployment rate for citizens was 2.9 per cent.

The unemployment rate for post-secondary (non-tertiary) educated residents improved to 2 per cent from 3.1 per cent a year ago, but the situation worsened slightly for all other education groups, with degree-holding residents seeing the highest unemployment rate of 2.7 per cent, up from 2.5 per cent a year ago.

Broken down by age, the unemployment rate was highest for those aged below 30 at 4.3 per cent, up from 3.9 per cent a year ago.

Total employment grew by 33,400 in the third quarter, up from the increase of 27,700 in the preceding quarter and largely unchanged from the figure of 33,100 a year ago. This brought the total employment figure to 3,583,200 in September, which was 3.8 per cent higher than a year ago.

More people were laid off, with the number of redundancies at 3,500 in the third quarter, compared with 2,410 in the previous quarter and 2,710 a year ago.

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