Singapore's labour market improves in Q3, unemployment falls in Sep: MOM

SINGAPORE'S labour market indicators improved across the board in the third quarter, with unemployment rates falling for the second straight month in September following a brief uptick in July, according to advance data from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on Friday (Oct 29).

Unemployment figures fell 0.1 percentage point in all categories compared with August, with the overall unemployment rate for September at 2.6 per cent, resident unemployment at 3.5 per cent and citizen unemployment at 3.7 per cent.

Total employment, excluding migrant domestic workers, fell 3,400 in Q3, easing from the previous quarter's decline of 16,300.

Non-resident workers made up the decline, according to MOM, whereas resident employment grew more quickly in Q3 than the earlier quarter.

Retrenchments dipped slightly to 2,000 in Q3, with 75 per cent of these in the services industry. There were 2,340 retrenchments in the previous quarter. In Q3 a year ago, Singapore recorded 9,120 retrenchments at the peak.

"This shows that our labour market remained resilient in spite of the return to Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) restrictions in July," Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said following a visit to Deloitte Consulting.

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"There continued to be employment opportunities for residents, especially in the outward-oriented sectors such as professional services and financial services," he said.

Dr Tan added that the expansion of Singapore's vaccinated travel lanes (VTLs) and travel-related activities may also give an uplift to industries such as air transport services.

Early this week, Singapore announced two new VTLs to Australia and Switzerland, adding to an existing 11 countries, whose vaccinated travellers can enter Singapore without quarantine.

Still, recovery in Singapore's labour market is expected to remain "uneven", Dr Tan said.

MOM noted that outward-oriented sectors such as professional services, information and communications and financial services continued to see growth in resident employment.

However, food and beverages services, retail trade and accommodation trimmed their resident workforce, it said.

"This reflected ongoing Covid-19 border restrictions and safe management measures imposed in the third quarter. Non-resident employment continued to contract across most sectors in Q3 2021," said MOM.

Last week, Singapore extended its curbs on dining for another 4 weeks until Nov 21 amid a high number of daily new Covid-19 cases and deaths.

Aubeck Kam, Manpower Permanent Secretary, said this is expected to lead to mixed employment trends into the next quarter, especially in sectors affected by the "stabilisation phase" measures such as food and beverage and retail trade, even as accommodation and air transport services may see an uplift with the expanded VTLs.

Asked why Singapore's labour market conditions had seen improvement despite the restrictions, Kam said there has not been "across-the-board" growth because services that depend on people gathering have naturally had to be a lot more constrained.

This has however been offset by the growth in demand for other services, such as professional services.