SINGAPORE — After six straight quarters of declines, the number of job vacancies here rebounded, with employers having less difficulty filling these positions.
And of the 53,800 openings in September last year, nearly half (48 per cent) were for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said. Its latest job-vacancy report, released on Tuesday (Feb 7), showed that about one in five of these openings were waiting to be filled for at least six months.
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With a slower economy and restructuring efforts to go leaner on manpower, the number of job vacancies has been on a broad downward spiral in the last two years.
Based on seasonally adjusted figures, the number of vacancies fell steadily from 65,700 in December 2014 for six successive quarters before rising to 50,800 in September last year.
The overall unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, stayed unchanged between last June and September at 2.1 per cent, creeping up to 2.2 per cent in December, based on preliminary estimates.
The MOM said that the increase in the proportion of PMET vacancies — from 39 per cent in 2013 to 48 per cent last year — was mainly in financial and insurance services, professional services, as well as information and communications.
The top PMET job openings were for teaching and training professionals (2,100 positions), management executives (1,210), software, Web and multimedia developers (1,150), as well as registered nurses and enrolled or assistant nurses (1,060).
The MOM added that the lack of qualified candidates may explain why some PMET openings were hard to fill.
For non-PMET positions, the greatest demand were for service and sales workers (11,840 vacancies), including shop sales assistants (2,720), security guards (2,280) and waiters (1,290).
The report also found that, compared with a year earlier, there was a smaller proportion of job openings unfilled for at least six months, and most of these were non-PMET vacancies, particularly among service and sales workers.
The MOM said this could be due to undesirable job-specific conditions in non-PMET positions, such as low wages, a long workweek and shift work.
CIMB Private Bank economist Song Seng Wun said that the rebound in vacancies last September was an “encouraging sign” that some industries were still hiring. In the professional services sector, for instance, he observed greater demand for PMETs in compliance and audit in recent years as regulators exercise greater scrutiny.
On the rising proportion of PMET job openings, DBS Bank senior economist Irvin Seah said that this partly reflected an economic shift to higher-value-added activities that call for jobs with higher skills.
For instance, new sectors, such as financial technology, house largely highly skilled positions, while firms in the manufacturing sector are putting a greater focus on robotics and data analytics. “This essentially means companies will need fewer low-skilled workers and more skilled technicians or engineers,” he said.
Agreeing, UOB economist Francis Tan said that the Government’s measures to improve productivity over the years have seen an accompanying dip in non-PMET job openings in labour-intensive sectors. The latest MOM report showed a drop in the proportion of non-PMET vacancies, mainly in accommodation and food services, construction, wholesale and retail trade, and manufacturing.
The food-and-beverage sector, which previously sought more waiters, now requires programmers to create digital menus to obviate the need to hire more service crew members, Mr Tan said.
“Companies that are labour-intensive are either closing down or upgrading themselves to survive,” he added.
