SINGAPORE: The city-state’s total employment, excluding foreign domestic workers, fell in the first quarter of this year in the sharpest quarterly contraction since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak.
“The contraction of 19,900 was due to a significant reduction in foreign employment,” said the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) Manpower Research and Statistics Department today.
In its preliminary estimates which reflected the early impact of Covid-19 on the labour market, the ministry said the employment contractions were observed broadly across manufacturing, construction and services.
Services experienced the sharpest decline, as consumer-facing food and beverage services and retail trade, and tourism-dependent accommodation were most severely affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, it said.
Nonetheless, the ministry said, in spite of difficulties since the start of the outbreak and seasonal influences, local employment managed to grow at a modest pace.
Contractions in wholesale and retail trade, food and beverage services, and accommodation were offset by increases in healthcare, public administration and professional services, it said.
However, MOM noted that workers who remained in employment might have experienced reductions in working hours or adjustments in their salaries.
On unemployment, the ministry said the overall rate rose to 2.4% in the first quarter from 2.3% in the preceding quarter but remained lower than the peak during SARS in 2003.
The highs seen during SARS were 4.8% for the overall rate and 3.3% during the global financial crisis in 2009, it said.
Similarly, the ministry said retrenchments in the quarter were about one-quarter that of the quarterly peak seen in the global financial crisis.
Overall retrenchments in the first quarter were 3,000, higher than the previous quarter’s 2,670.
For now, they remained significantly lower than the quarterly peak during the global financial crisis’ first quarter of 12,760, it said.
With jobs and wage support measures announced in Budgets, and companies encouraged to retain workers and retrench only as a last resort, layoffs did not see a sharp increase in the first quarter, it added.
Services saw an increase in retrenchments, mainly in consumer-facing retail trade and food and beverage services as domestic consumption fell when safe distancing measures kicked in.
Tourism-dependent accommodation also experienced more retrenchments amid a drop in visitor arrivals.
The number of retrenchments remained the same in manufacturing and construction sectors, said MOM. — April 29, 2020, Bernama
