As unemployment improves, focus on underemployment as well

Jeremy Fox

Published Wed, Apr 12, 2023 · 05:50 AM

THE job market ended 2022 with a flourish in many markets – Singapore, for example, ended the year with a record 227,800 more workers employed, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 numbers by about 3 per cent.

But as the effects of the pandemic begin to wane, the Asia Pacific region is facing new challenges from global financial tightening and a projected slowdown in external demand. Job security remains a top concern for many people, particularly among the Gen Z and millennial population.

While the numbers show declining unemployment, there is a larger and, with the fiscal tightening, potentially looming issue of underemployment that is getting little to no attention. Underemployment is a measure of the total number of people who are unwillingly working in low-skill and low-paying jobs or only part-time because the…