THE Jobs Growth Incentive (JGI) aims to stretch employers' budget for manpower growth to create more good jobs for Singaporeans, said Manpower Minister Josephine Teo in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

The S$1 billion scheme is Singapore's "biggest push ever for jobs" to match the seriousness of the impact that Covid-19 is having on businesses, she went on to highlight.

As Singapore progressively reopens its economy and borders, some sectors will recover more quickly, while others may have to change completely. "Companies will have to pivot, to position themselves better for the post-Covid-19 world. This means new jobs opening up in some areas even as others see job losses. In the growing areas, we want to nudge employers to hire and also train Singaporeans."

Sectors such as biomedical sciences, financial services, and information and communications technology are seen as bright spots despite the downturn.

JGI aims to create new jobs, in particular for mature workers. Under the scheme, the government will co-pay up to 25 per cent of salaries of all new local hires in firms that can increase their headcount of local workers over the next six months for one year, subject to a cap. For those aged 40 and above, the co-payment to firms will be up to 50 per cent.

In her post, Mrs Teo gave the example of a company which had 10 local staff on average for the first eight months of this year, before going on to hire two new local staff in September. The two new hires will receive salary support of 25 per cent for the next one year capped at the first S$5,000 of their salary. If one of the new hires is 45 years old, for instance, his salary support works out to 50 per cent. This then totals up to S$45,000 for both of them.

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In order for the company to receive JGI for the full one year, it has to maintain a local workforce of more than 10 employees. However, if there is "churn of the original team", the total JGI payout reduces proportionally. For example, if one of the original 10 employees leaves the company in October and the company hires another Singaporean to replace him, the company will get JGI for all three new local hires, but at a 90 per cent rate since its original workforce had shrunk by 10 per cent.

She added: "With JGI, what the company gets is very substantial savings on its wage bill that allows it to be bolder in manpower expansion, and bring forward hiring."

More details will be released on how JGI is calculated later this month.