NEWLY CREATED POSITIONS
The report also found that 45.7 per cent of last year’s vacancies were newly created positions, down from 47.3 per cent in 2023.
Despite the slight decline, the large share of newly created positions shows the dynamism of the labour market, said Mr Ang Boon Heng, director of MOM’s manpower research and statistics department.
Instead of the same positions being filled by different workers, there are structural changes to the jobs and a move toward higher-skilled roles, he said.
Of the new positions, 54.7 per cent were created because of an expansion of existing business functions. Around a third were created because companies were expanding into new functions, and 6.5 per cent were created because jobs were restructured or redesigned.
The sectors that had more vacancies for newly created roles were in information and communications, professional services and financial and insurance services.
MOM said that was in line with the overall economic expansion of these sectors.
On the other hand, retail trade and food and beverage services had fewer newly created job vacancies.
“This could reflect the sectors’ slower business momentum as locals shift their spending to overseas travel destinations,” the ministry said.
JOB MISMATCHES DECLINE
In the past two years, job matching efficiency – which refers to how easily an unemployed person can find employment – has improved, MOM said.
Both the unemployment rate and the job vacancy rate have decreased, signalling that the labour market is more efficient at matching workers with available jobs, the report said.
However, MOM’s Mr Ang acknowledged that while the macro view captures the experiences of the majority of workers, there will be exceptions.
“People on the ground will say that we have a different experience,” he said. It is not that the exceptions are not important, but the ministry’s report focuses on the broad view, which shows a reduction in structural mismatches.
“It’s sort of quite aligned with what we’re seeing also in the hard-to-fill vacancies,” he said.
Vacancies that have been unfilled for at least six months went down from 23.5 per cent in 2023 to 19.4 per cent last year. In 2014, the figure stood at 41.4 per cent.
