Layoffs down in Q1 2017, but total employment shrank: MOM
Jobseekers at the Inclusive Job Fairs at Our Tampines Hub earlier this month. Photo: Wee Teck Hian/ TODAY
SINGAPORE — Layoffs may have dipped in the first quarter of this year, but the total number of people in employment shrank, while the overall unemployment rate continued to creep up.
Releasing its preliminary labour-market estimates for the first quarter on Friday (April 28), the Manpower Ministry (MOM) said the indicators were mixed.
Total employment contracted by 8,500, after it grew by 2,300 in the fourth quarter of last year, chiefly due to a dip in the number of work-permit holders in the construction and manufacturing sectors.
Seasonally adjusted, the overall unemployment rate — which covers citizens and permanent residents as well as foreigners living in households here — crept up from 2.2 per cent to 2.3 per cent between the end of the fourth quarter of 2016 and the first quarter.
The unemployment rate for citizens and permanent residents, however, stayed unchanged over the same period (3.2 per cent), as did the citizen unemployment rate (3.5 per cent).
Meanwhile, the number of layoffs dropped slightly from 5,440 to 4,800 between the fourth quarter of 2016 and the first quarter, with redundancies continuing its ascent in the construction and services sectors.
For the whole of last year, the number of job redundancies stood at 19,170, the highest since the 2009 global financial crisis.
