The suite of measures introduced last year helped to avert a "Covid generation" of workers and students by enhancing their employability and preserving human capital, said Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat.

Going forward, he urged employers to look beyond hiring just "plug and play" workers.

Instead, they should look for the potential within job seekers to learn and grow with the company.

"At the same time, job seekers should keep an open mind, be receptive to new and different job roles, and take the initiative to build new skills," Mr Heng said.

In rounding up the debate on the Budget, he noted that the latest overall employment rates for fresh graduates from institutes of higher learning were similar to those of past years, although full-time permanent employment fell by about 10 percentage points compared with the 2019 cohort.

Some 94 per cent of autonomous university graduates found jobs or traineeships within six months of graduation last year, compared with 91 per cent in 2019.

"The SGUnited Traineeships Programme has contributed significantly to this outcome. It has placed close to 5,400 recent graduates into traineeships, to help them gain useful skills and industry experience, and prepare them for the recovery. Some have already landed full-time jobs," said Mr Heng.

The Budget also saw the Jobs Growth Incentive being extended to September, which Mr Heng said he hopes will encourage more companies to convert trainees to employees in a timely manner.

"Overall, we have managed to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on our young. While the unemployment rate amongst our young increased by 2 percentage points from September 2019 to September 2020, it remained well below that in European Union countries," he said, adding that it remains a priority to safeguard the future of Singapore's youth.

The impact of the pandemic extends to the wider labour market. Nearly 76,000 local job seekers were placed in jobs and skills opportunities through the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Pac-kage between April and December last year.

Almost 80 per cent of them were placed in jobs; of these, six in 10 were long-term roles.

Most of the placements were in growth sectors such as infocomm technology, healthcare and manufacturing, said Mr Heng.

Many job seekers also joined industries with a promising growth outlook through the Jobs Growth Incentive, and drew the same or higher wages than before, he said.

Mature workers aged 40 and above made up about half of the first 110,000 workers supported by the Jobs Growth Incentive, based on preliminary estimates.

They also made up about half of the 76,000 local workers placed in SGUnited Jobs and Skills work and training opportunities.

Mr Heng said: "We tilted support towards mature job seekers, recognising the higher hurdles they faced with career transitions."

More than 8,000 mature job seekers were placed last year in career conversion programmes, which help trainees to reskill for jobs with growth prospects.

Seven in 10 of the programme's participants have earned higher wages after starting their new jobs.

Mr Heng also responded to a comment by labour MP Melvin Yong (Radin Mas) that every job is at risk.

Mr Heng said: "I am heartened by the labour movement's forward-looking approach on bringing firms and workers together to ride the waves of change and emerge stronger. Technological advancements promise new possibilities as well as challenges."