Singapore Employers Fire Record Number of Workers

Singapore Employers Fire Record Number of Workers

By Shamim Adam

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore employers fired a record number of workers last quarter as the nation’s deepest recession since independence in 1965 forced manufacturers to cut output.

The Southeast Asian nation’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 3.2 percent from a revised 2.5 percent in the previous quarter, the Ministry of Manpower said today. Employers retrenched 10,800 workers, and another 1,800 were released from their contracts early, bringing total job cuts to 12,600.

The worst global recession since World War II has battered trade-dependent Singapore, where the government says gross domestic product may shrink as much as 9 percent this year. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s efforts to prevent job losses by handing out cash haven’t stopped companies such as music- player maker Creative Technology Ltd. from firing workers.

“Falling external demand has severely affected the manufacturing sector,” the report said. Employment declined “as the economy continued to worsen.”

Singapore will make a “slow and gradual” climb out of the current recession, and the island’s economy won’t experience a “decisive rebound” this year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said yesterday.

The jobless rate was the highest in more than three years, and in line with the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of nine economists. The manufacturing industry lost 19,900 jobs, while service industries added 10,300 new positions last quarter, the report showed.

Construction companies hired 8,500 new workers, resulting in a total net job loss of 1,000 jobs in the first three months of 2009, the report said.

About 13,920 workers were retrenched last year in Singapore, the most since 2003, while another 2,970 people were released before their contracts ended, the most since 1998.

In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1998, about 30,000 workers were retrenched in Singapore, and some 26,000 people lost their jobs in the 2001 recession.

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Singapore to keep unemployment below 5.2%

Singapore to keep unemployment below 5.2%

Singapore aims to keep its unemployment rate below 5.2 percent this year, Xinhua reported yesterday. That means the unemployment rate could more than double this year.

Singapore's overall unemployment rate averaged 2.3 percent in 2008, up from 2.1 percent in 2007.

Singapore experienced 5.2 percent unemployment in March 2003 when it rose to that level from 4.2 percent in December 2002, according to another Xinhua report in 2003.

Australia is currently experiencing 5.2 percent unemployment, a four-year high, according to a Reuters report published by the Straits Times.

Singapore Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong said yesterday the unemployment rate for the first quarter of 2009 is likely to be higher than for the fourth quarter of 2008 and detailed statistics will be released shortly. He said his ministry is seeing more retrenchment notices being issued.

But jobs are still available in several sectors, he added.

Not enough job ads to fill a newspaper pullout

However, job ads are reaching vanishing point in Singapore’s leading newspaper.

The Straits Times no longer publishes a regular separate pullout advertising jobs. Recruit, the job ads section, was tacked on to the Classified pullout on Saturday for a simple reason – the job ads did not fill enough pages to be run as a separate pullout. And even the few pages that were there included display ads for job training and not just job openings. The jobs available seemed to be mostly for technicians and retail workers. There were few openings for professionals.

The Manpower Minister is putting on a brave face.

Government schemes like the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (Spur) are helping companies cut costs to save jobs, he said, reports Channel NewsAsia.

But how quickly the Singapore economy recovers depends much on external factors like the global economy’s performance, it added.

The minister was quoted as saying: “"We must prepare ourselves for another few quarters of downturn.”

In other words, the downturn is not likely to end soon and the Singapore economy has become like the global climate – dependent on the rest of the world.

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