Singapore's worst talent gaps revealed

Despite showing signs of improvement, these industries still face talent shortages

Singapore's worst talent gaps revealed

Talent mismatches in Singapore between job postings and jobseekers has declined by 8% over the past four years.

The new study indicates that both employers and candidates are slowly adjusting to the evolving job landscape.

Despite the improvement, data reveals that talent shortages still exist — particularly for technology and sales roles.

Indeed’s study found that Singapore’s rate of job mismatches is comparable to the UK’s. However, Singapore’s current rate of 36% as of May this year is much lower than Australia’s rate, and slightly higher than the US and Canada.

Findings show that there are some roles in Singapore that remain unfilled despite the frequency of job ads posted.

This is especially for technology and sales roles such as software engineering, sales executives and business development, where there are fewer skilled candidates to satisfy employer demand.

READ MORE: Myopic hiring worsening tech talent gap

Singapore’s tight labour market with an unemployment rate of just 2.2%, as reported by the Ministry of Manpower, means the misalignment is less of a problem than it is in other countries.

Meanwhile, occupations with lesser qualification requirements such as customer service officers and drivers have fewer available employment opportunities and an oversupply of candidates to job postings.

“Mismatch in Singapore has gradually declined over the past four years,” said Callam Pickering, economist at Indeed. “Today around 36% of jobseekers would need different job titles on their resumes in order to have the same distribution as job postings.

“That’s down from around 44% of jobseekers four years ago. Indeed data reveals a dynamic jobs market in Singapore. The island nation is positioning itself as a technology hub, which is readily observable in our data.”

Roles with greatest talent shortage:

  1. Software engineer
  2. Sales executive
  3. Business development manager
  4. Software architect
  5. Account manager
  6. Full stack developer
  7. Data scientist
  8. Marketing executive
  9. System engineer
  10.  Sales engineer