Singapore’s significant jobs slump

The number of online job listings in Singapore has fallen sharply, a new study says.

Singapore online job postings slumped 13% from March 2014 to last month, according to the latest Monster Employment Index.

The Index – a culmination of data from a multitude of online job boards in Singapore – also revealed listings dropped in every industry sector and occupation since January this year.

Top performers included the education industry as a whole, with the lowest decline of 2% year-on-year (YOY), and the real estate and legal occupations, with a decline of 1% YOY.

“Singapore’s online hiring scene continues to demonstrate a downward spiral for the third month in a row, the steepest decline since January 2015,” Monster’s managing director for India, the Middle East, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia Sanjay Modi said.

“Overall economic uncertainty will continue to have a dampening effect on the hiring outlook in the immediate future,” he said.

Lowest growth industries include the consumer goods sector, which experienced a 17% YOY decline, and the banking, financial services and insurance sector, which experienced a 15% decrease.

Lowest growth occupations included in hospital and travel, which dropped 15%, and engineering and production, which dropped 14%.

One of Singapore’s best performing industries, the IT, Telecom/ISP and BPO/ITEs industry ceased a 16-month growth run and dropped by 6% YOY.

The index also revealed customer service roles have not had positive growth for nine months, falling by 10% YOY to last month.

The index gauges online job posting activity based on real-time reviews of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Singapore.