PAP Spin - PMET job loss is due to structural unemployment

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Beware job-skill mismatch: Swee Say
Toh Yong Chuan
The Straits Times
Monday, Aug 05, 2013

SINGAPORE - Structural unemployment may rise in Singapore and requires the special attention of companies and workers, warned labour chief Lim Swee Say.

The mismatch between jobs created and the skills needed to do them is harder to fix than the seasonal job churn in the labour market, he said on Friday.

And a developed economy like Singapore faces a greater threat of it happening, said the secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress.

"Structural unemployment affects workers at all levels, including professionals, managers and executives (PMEs)," he added. "It doesn't matter whether you are young or old, rank and file or PMEs."

Mr Lim's comments came two days after the Manpower Ministry released data that showed unemployment rising in the second quarter of the year even as more jobs were created.

He noted that the mismatch between jobs and skills can happen in all sectors, and called on workers and employers to work together with unions and the Government to tackle it.

Workers should be adaptable and keep upgrading their skills, while firms can tap government schemes to raise their productivity to create better jobs, he said.

The labour movement sounded the alarm bells even as it kicked off a series of 23 National Day celebrations at the former Singapore Conference Hall.

In his written National Day message to unionists, Mr Lim pointed out that many countries face the problems of youth unemployment, inadequate pay rises for working adults and dwindling retirement funds for retirees - what he calls the problem of "three not enough".

Singapore is spared this triple whammy, with low unemployment, steady wage gains and a rising re-employment age.

But the country faces its own challenges, he noted.

"Besides countering the global threat of 'three not enough', we also have to tackle the issues of a widening income gap, an ageing workforce and the potential rise in structural unemployment."

He laid out some areas where Singapore must do better. One of them is transforming the economy to be more productive, even if it means slower growth.

It is better to grow at 3 per cent a year with productivity gains of 2 per cent, than at 4 per cent a year but with productivity gains of just 1 per cent, he said.

Companies facing labour shortages and rising business costs must become "leaner, greener and cleverer", he added.

But even as it looked forward, the NTUC retraced its history with a display of 48 old photographs at the former Singapore Conference Hall, where the union movement first started in 1961.

NTUC's youth chapter member Clarence Ngoh was one of the unionists who enjoyed looking at the old pictures.

Said the 20-year-old full-time national serviceman: "I am a nostalgic person, so old pictures remind me of how far the NTUC and Singapore have progressed."


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