The resident employment rate rose for a second straight year as the labour market continued to see broad-based improvement in 2022, with real income growth increasing from a year ago despite high inflation.

The employment rate for residents aged 15 and over rose to 67.5 per cent in June this year, up 0.3 percentage points from June 2021, an advanced release of the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) annual Labour Force in Singapore report on Thursday (Dec 1) showed.

The employment rate last year had already surpassed the pre-pandemic level of 65.2 per cent recorded in June 2019.

“If ranked against Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on overall employment rate, Singapore would place third,” MOM said.

Real median income growth  — income growth after taking into account inflation  — was 2.1 per cent this year, up from 0.9 per cent in 2021.

Nevertheless, the growth this year was still lower than in the years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, when inflation was lower. Real median income growth was 3.8 per cent per year on average between 2014 and 2019.

The unemployment rate fell across occupations. It fell from 3.4 per cent to 2.6 per cent for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) and from 5.1 per cent to 4.4 per cent for non-PMETs.

The long-term unemployment rate also dropped to around pre-Covid levels for both PMETs (0.8 to 0.5 per cent) and non-PMETs (0.9 to 0.7 per cent).

The share of residents in PMET roles increased: They made up 64 per cent of all employed residents as of June 2022, up from 62 per cent a year ago.

MOM said that the higher share reflected a highly educated workforce and sustained employment growth in sectors such as information and communications, finance and insurance as well as professional services.

The report also said that there were fewer people outside the workforce who were not actively seeking a job out of a belief that their search would not yield results, reflecting a strong recovery from the height of the pandemic in 2020.

The number of these discouraged workers fell from 11,600 in 2021 to 8,900 this year, making up 0.4 per cent this year, down from 0.5 per cent last year.

“The broad-based improvement in resident labour force performance reflects the continued economic recovery and the gradual normalisation of business and social activities,” MOM said, as it urged employers and workers to tap government programmes to speed up workforce transformation.

“This will enable us to develop our workers and build a more competitive and resilient workforce, while ensuring that wage growth is sustainable and supported by productivity growth.”

Source:
courtesy of TODAY

by DARYL CHOO

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