Resilience Budget: Aim to create 10,000 jobs in public and private sector over the year

AN initiative to create 10,000 jobs in both the public and private sector will be launched as part of the government's Resilience Budget, with the public sector taking a lead and accelerating its hiring plans.

The SGUnited Jobs initiative will see government agencies recruiting for long- and short-term roles, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Thursday as he presented plans to support the economy amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

"We will recruit for long-term roles in the public service and sectoral partner institutions, in areas such as social services, early childhood education and ICT (info-communications technology), so that we can enhance our provision of essential services," he said.

"We will also offer short-term temporary jobs to handle the increase in Covid-19-related operations, such as health declaration assistants, temporary management support officers and the transport ambassadors announced by the Minister for Transport earlier this week," he added.

At the same time, the government is working with the Singapore Business Federation, trade associations and chambers to identify private sector job opportunities.

"These may come from businesses recruiting for the eventual recovery, or with short-term manpower needs due to disruptions in labour supply," he said, adding that Micron and SMRT have already come on board the initiative.

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Workforce Singapore (WSG) will launch an SGUnited Jobs virtual career fair on Friday with more than 2,200 job vacancies, and this will focus on short-term temporary jobs that are immediately available.

As for young people, including first-time jobseekers and fresh graduates, Mr Heng said an SGUnited Traineeships programme will be introduced to provide young people with opportunities to gain valuable work experience while giving an added boost for employers to emerge stronger from this crisis.

Under the programme, WSG will co-share manpower costs with enterprises that offer traineeships targeted at local first-time jobseekers this year.

"We are looking to support up to 8,000 traineeships this year, across both large and small enterprises," Mr Heng said.

This will include science and technology traineeships in Singapore's research and development laboratories, deep-tech startups, accelerators and incubators.