Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said Singapore’s labor shortage problem is easing as unemployment continues to fall near pre-pandemic levels.
“As for local unemployment, we’re actually in pretty good shape. Unemployment has come down. I think we’re near pre-Covid levels,” he told CNBC.Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday.
“We’re seeing the long-term unemployment rate, defined as anyone unemployed for more than six months, falling to around 0.8 percent. [were] about 0.7%. So we’re actually pretty close to what it was before Covid,” Tan added.
Foreign labor force
Singapore’s total employment continued to grow by 42,000 people (excluding migrant domestic workers) in the first quarter of 2022, according to official data. About 85% of that comes from non-residents, as border restrictions are gradually lifted and employers fill vacancies for jobs that rely more heavily on migrant workers. .
“With the significant easing of border restrictions, we expect the non-resident workforce to continue to recover, catching up with the strong residential job growth over the past two years. will help relieve some of the current tightening of the labor market,” the ministry official said in the release of first-quarter figures.
“At the same time, the deterioration of the external economic environment, due in part to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, has weakened the demand outlook for some of our outward-facing sectors,” it added. .
Construction to welcome guests
The minister said that as border restrictions continue to be eased, more and more foreign workers are returning to Singapore, which will ease labor tension in some sectors, especially construction. .
In May, the CEO of a real estate company PropertyGuru Hari Krishnan emphasized that construction sector is almost closed for about two years because of a shortage of workers, although the industry will begin to recover in 2021. Supply chain congestion also affects construction materials, he said.
“[With] With the easing of borders, we have seen a huge increase in the number of foreign workers returning to Singapore. Our construction production process has partly recovered to more than 90% of pre-Covid levels, Tan said.
As a result, construction activity “has increased significantly,” he added.
“Qualifications of foreign workers [has] reached more than 90%. I think we’re probably looking at about 95% of the pre-pandemic level. Therefore, many projects have started concurrently and many contractors are also catching up on time.”
