SINGAPORE: Over the last year, it has become harder for both job seekers and hirers here to find the right match, the latest reflection of how fast skill needs are changing in Singapore, according to LinkedIn.
More than 60% of workers, or six in 10, found that the job search got more difficult in 2024, according to results released on Jan 16 of a poll of more than 1,000 Singapore workers conducted over November and December 2024.
This outstrips a global average of 50% in Singapore and 16 other markets.
The most commonly reported issue lay in finding a job that matches one’s personal criteria, followed by negotiating salary or benefits, and making the job application stand out.
Nevertheless, more than 65% of respondents are undeterred from job searching in 2025, with younger workers leading the charge in a bid for better salary, work-life balance and career growth.
Conversely, half of the 500 hiring professionals LinkedIn polled separately said it has become more challenging to find qualified talent over the past year.
Only 3.4% indicated that they received applications that meet all the required and preferred qualifications for a given opening, with almost 80% observing a mismatch between the skills professionals have and what companies need.
LinkedIn Asia-Pacific Chua Pei Ying chief economist told The Straits Times that these figures show how fast the labour market is changing.
She noted that even if one stays in the same job, the skill sets needed for a given job here are set to change by around 70% by 2030, compared with 2016, due to technological advances and other changes.
In comparison, skill needs are estimated to change by 64% in India and 66% in Australia over the same period.
The pace of change dovetails with an improving outlook, with three in four human resources leaders expressing plans to hire more in 2025 than 2024.
In fact, LinkedIn’s latest edition of its annual Jobs On The Rise list, also released on Jan 16, revealed that hiring interest extends beyond the technology and finance sectors that tend to hog the headlines.
Roles in engineering, sustainability and food and beverage services that are not yet readily supplanted by artificial intelligence (AI) are also sought after in Singapore.
For this list, LinkedIn, which has over four million users here, ranked the fastest-growing jobs in the market here based on both job listings and members who said they held that job from the start of 2022 to end-July 2024.
Food and beverage assistants came in tops with a 92% average annual growth rate over the period studied.
AI researchers were in second place with an 81% growth rate, while electrical and instrumentation technicians followed closely behind with a 78% growth rate.
LinkedIn noted that roles on the list such as food and beverage assistant and facilities coordinator reflect post-Covid recovery trends in the broader economy, including the rebound of the hospitality sector and return of workers to offices.
Two-thirds of the jobs on the latest list are new to the list, Chua said, underscoring the importance of finding ways to secure these coveted roles amid the rapidly changing jobs landscape.
To help address the mismatch between job seekers and hirers it has observed, the platform is rolling out an AI-powered job recommendation system that not only looks at what users explicitly list as their skills, but also infers likely skills from their usage patterns.
For instance, a LinkedIn member writing an article on digital marketing best practices and posting about it on the platform could be implied to have digital marketing skills, even if he did not explicitly list it on his member profile, a LinkedIn spokeswoman said.
Furthermore. this means members could get recommended better job matches, with more nuanced matching beyond just keywords. They will also be able to see how well they match with any job opening they browse. — The Straits Times/ANN
