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Employment Situation, Second Quarter 2015

Statistics and publications

Overview

  1. Against a moderation of GDP growth in the second quarter of 20151, employment grew at a moderate pace. The unemployment rate edged up after trending downwards for the past four quarters, but remained low. Layoffs continued to fall for the second consecutive quarter. These are the key preliminary findings from the “Employment Situation, Second Quarter 2015” report released by the Manpower Research and Statistics Department, Ministry of Manpower.

    Main Findings

    Unemployment
  2. Preliminary estimates showed that the overall seasonally adjusted unemployment rate edged up from 1.8% in March 2015 to 2.0% in June 2015. Unemployment rose among residents (from 2.5% to 2.8%) and citizens (from 2.6% to 2.9%). These are similar to the unemployment situation a year ago, in June 2014.

    Employment growth
  3. After contracting last quarter (-6,100), overall employment grew by 15,700 in the second quarter of 2015, supported by increases in construction and services. However, taken as a whole, employment growth in the first half of 2015 has moderated compared to a year ago.
  4. There were 3,633,500 employed persons in June 2015, which was 2.4% higher than a year ago compared to 2.7% in March 2015.

    Redundancy
  5. Layoffs declined for the second consecutive quarter. Some 3,100 workers were laid off, down from 3,500 in the preceding quarter.

    For More Information
  6. The “Employment Situation, Second Quarter 2015” report is available on the Ministry of Manpower’s website at http://stats.mom.gov.sg. More comprehensive labour market data will be released in the “Labour Market Report, Second Quarter 2015” on 15 September 2015.

1 Based on advanced estimates, the Singapore economy grew by 1.7 percent on a year-on-year basis in the second quarter of 2015, lower than the 2.8 percent growth in the previous quarter.  On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualised basis, the economy contracted by 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2015.