Job uncertainty: People play checkers in Singapore. The country’s employment market is starting to slow, with job growth beginning to slide this year. — AFP
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s alliance of the labour movement and employers’ federation expects more workers to lose their jobs in the coming months, and urges them – as well as bosses – to work with it to soften the blow.
Calling the outlook “sobering”, National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) secretary-general Ng Chee Meng forecast an uptrend in retrenchments in 2024, a year described as “fragile” by economists, given geopolitical tensions and technological disruptions.
He said: “It is going to be a tough year for our workers. We are already starting to see signs, particularly with retrenchment figures doubling and wage growth stagnating, or even declining.”
In 2023, when the Singapore economy grew 1.2%, 14,320 workers here were let go, more than double the number in 2022 when growth was 3.6%.
The growth forecast for 2024 is between 1% and 3%.
While the labour movement has stepped up its work to prepare workers for new jobs and careers, the fall from the axe this year could, at best, be cushioned.
Recent rounds of layoffs are rising due to the structural alignment of businesses into new opportunities and the exit of lower value-added businesses from Singapore, said Ng.
Ng was speaking to reporters on Tuesday at the first annual pre-Budget media briefing that NTUC is co-hosting with the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) whose members – on their end – are grappling with rising business costs.
Top on the two partners’ wish list for Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, who will open the 2024 Budget session on Feb 16, includes financial support for displaced workers to tide them over in the short term, and collaborative training with firms to help them move into new jobs.
Raising the SkillsFuture training credit for individuals is also on the cards.
The Manpower Ministry is expected to announce boosters for displaced workers in the Budget session.
In NTUC’s annual survey of about 2,000 workers in December 2023 and January, almost 40% of Singaporean workers said they were likely to lose their jobs in 2024, a jump from 25% in 2023. About 12% of the respondents were unsure, leaving less than half – 48% – confident of keeping their posts.
Unemployment in 2023 remained low at 1.9% and while 89,400 jobs were added – higher than the 61,500 in pre-pandemic 2019 – job growth has begun to slide.
SNEF president Robert Yap said some aspects of the job shedding that is rocking Singapore are “positive” – they shake up the unproductive segments and help keep industries healthy.
But he called on employers to rope in the alliance early, because that would allow proactive intervention to save jobs, or resettle workers into new jobs.
“A lot of times, employers don’t want to inform us as they are afraid that employees become very negative and that affects the entire organisation,” he said. “We are trying to change that because we think that openness is important.”
Yap would like more fine-tuning to public support schemes. He cited the example of Career Conversion Programmes, which subsidise salaries and course fees of mid-career workers for nine months when they take on a new job. These workers’ new employers are left high and dry, unable to get the grant, if their worker quits before the tenure ends.
“Maybe the government can be a bit more forthcoming in either sharing the risk or mitigating the risks so that they don’t fall on the employers,” he said. “Otherwise, the take-up rate would not be so good, our transformation will not be that fast.”
The alliance is also urging greater support for caregivers and more broadly, flexible work arrangements that will get women and older workers back into the workforce as Singapore’s population ages. — The Straits Times/ANN
