Labour market improves with more hires and job vacancies

SINGAPORE — The labour market continues to show signs of recovery with more people getting hired and the number of job vacancies on the rise.

Hiring for the modern services cluster, which includes the info-communications technology sector, as well as financial and insurance services has gone up.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) stated in its bi-annual macroeconomic review released Friday (Oct 26) that “slack in the labour market has effectively been absorbed at the aggregate level”.

This overall improvement could lead to higher wage growth in 2018 and 2019 compared with the results last year.

Data released by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on the same day also showed that total employment — excluding foreign domestic workers — grew by 15,200 in the third quarter of this year, a reversal from the decline seen in the same period a year ago, and more than double when compared with the quarter before.

New hires in the manufacturing sector grew by 3,500 for the first time, after 15 quarters of decline.

The increase for the third quarter follows from the 10,100 new hires in the first half of this year, which MAS said was driven mainly by the modern services cluster.

However, it noted that domestic-oriented industries, such as construction, retail trade as well as food and beverage (F&B), saw a small decline in employment.

There has been the continued shedding of jobs in the transport equipment and electronics manufacturing industries as well.

MORE JOB VACANCIES

In terms of job opportunities, MOM said that vacancies are available in sectors such as info-communications and media, finance and insurance, healthcare, professional services, wholesale trade, and built environment.

It cautioned, though, that as the labour market begins to tighten, employers may face greater challenges filling vacancies.

“Given the ongoing economic restructuring and the changing demand for jobs and skills, it is important that workers and businesses stay agile and responsive to market demands,” it said.

The number of job vacancies has been trending upwards since the second quarter of 2017, hitting a three-year high in the second quarter of this year.

The overall vacancy rate in the first half of this year rose to 2.7 per cent, a 0.3 percentage point increase compared with a year ago.

MAS said that the strong hiring outlook was corroborated by ManpowerGroup’s hiring outlook survey. It showed that employment outlook for the whole economy was +12 per cent for the third quarter, up from +4 per cent.

Outlook for the finance, insurance and real estate sector as a whole registered as +26 per cent, compared with +3 per cent last year.

Such rosy prospects are not for some domestic-oriented industries such as retail and F&B services, due to weaker sales growth.

Based on data from MOM, resident unemployment rate has remained fairly stable, at 2.9 per cent over the last two quarters. The marginal tick upwards of 0.1 percentage point from the first to second quarter is because more jobseekers are entering the labour market due to an improvement in hiring prospects, MAS said.

The data also showed that retrenchments have been falling over the first half of this year and has continued falling in the third quarter.

Friday’s labour statistics from MOM showed that 2,500 people were retrenched in the third quarter, down from 3,030 in the previous quarter and from 3,400 in the same period a year ago.