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Nov 28, 2008

Women, older workers up

By Aaron Low

EFFORTS by the Government to get more women and older workers to return to the workforce have paid off with more of them being employed, according to a report released by the Manpower Ministry on Friday morning.

The report, based on a survey done in the middle of this year, said that the employment rate for locals here has risen to 77 per cent - up from 76.5 per cent a year ago.

The rise was mainly attributed to the increasing numbers of women returning to the workforce and gaining employment as a result of a bouyant economy last year, said the ministry.

Likewise, the efforts spearheaded by Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Boon Heng and the National Trades Union Congress to get more older workers back in jobs is also bearing fruit.

The employment rate for residents aged 55 to 64 has gone up by 1 percentage point to 57.2 per cent.

The Manpower Ministry also said in the report that the median monthly income for full-time workers rose by 11 per cent to $2,590 from a year ago.

But after taking into account inflation, which rose by 6.4 per cent in October, the rise in real incomes was just 4.6 per cent.

The jobless rate also went up, after reaching a decade low in the second half of 2007, with the less skilled remaining more vulnerable to unemployment.

Here are the other key findings of the survey:

There were 1,928,300 residents in the labour force in June 2008, comprising 1,093,200 males and 835,100 females. The resident labour force grew by 2.71 per cent in June 2008, up from 2 per cent a year ago. This was driven by both growth in the resident population and female labour force participation rate.

Most of the new jobs taken up by residents were in PMET positions. In the last two years, there were continued employment gains for residents in PMET occupations across all major sectors, but more so in services. Conversely, the number of residents employed in non-PMET occupations fell over the past two years.

There were fewer residents employed in non-PMET jobs in manufacturing and services, but more in construction. This partly reflects the improvement in educational profile of the resident labour force. Consequently, PMETs now formed 51 per cent of the resident workforce, up from 41 per cent a decade ago. Correspondingly, the share of production and related workers declined from 30 per cent to 24 per cent and clerical, sales & service workers from 29 per cent to 25 per cent.

More comprehensive data will be published in the Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2008 on Jan 30.

The report is available online on the Ministry of Manpower's website at http://www.mom.gov.sg/mrsd/publication.

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