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The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) expects increasing job losses and fewer pay rises this year as the economy heads into its worst recession on record.
The central bank said the job market will worsen amid a sharp drop in both economic activity and demand for goods and services at home and abroad.
“The resident unemployment rate is expected to rise and wage growth ease,” MAS said in its monetary policy statement yesterday.
“A degree of labour market slack could emerge as firms pull back on their hiring plans, even as the scale of retrenchments is mitigated by the Jobs Support Scheme,” it said.
MAS noted the “economy will enter a recession”, and will shrink by 1 per cent to 4 per cent this year.
In the fourth quarter of last year, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate had risen to 2.3 per cent, up from 2.1 per cent in the last three months of 2018.
Unemployment among Singaporean citizens was even higher at 3.3 per cent, up from 3 per cent in the same quarter of 2018.
Retrenchments had also crept up in the fourth quarter of last year to 2,700 persons, compared with 2,470 in the third quarter of 2019.
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