SINGAPORE: On the job front, there was a mixture of good and bad news for new university graduates, according to results from the 2024 Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey, which was published on Monday (Feb 24).

The good news is that the median gross salary of new graduates has gone up by 4.2% in 2024, rising from S$4,317 to S$4,500.

Salaries in the business sector went up the most, increasing from S$4,150 in 2023 to S$4,400 in 2024. Meanwhile, those employed in arts, design, and media had the smallest increase, from S$3,740 in 2023 to S$3,800 in 2024.

On the other hand, the trend of fresh graduates being employed within six months of finishing their final examinations has gone down for the second year in a row. In 2023, 89.6% found a job within that period. However, this number dropped to 87.1% last year.

12,500 individuals who graduated last year and are in the labour force participated in the poll, which was held by the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, the Singapore Management University (SMU), the Singapore University of Social Sciences, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

The Singapore Institute of Technology conducted a separate survey, the results of which will be released in due time.

Notably, while 84.1% of 2023 graduates employed within six months found full-time employment last year, this number decreased to 79.5%. The number of freelancers remained stable at 1.5% in 2023 and 1.6% in 2024.

The number of those who found part-time or temporary employment increased slightly from 4% to 6% from 2023 to 2024, while those who were in involuntary part-time or temporary employment also doubled to 2.2% in 2024 from 1.1% the previous year.

Among those who have yet to find a job, 8.5% were still job-hunting, and 4.4% will soon start either work or a business. The sectors that saw the biggest full-time permanent employment rates are health sciences, information and digital technologies, and business.

In a separate media release, SMU said that its graduates remain in high demand, with an 89.8% overall employment rate and an 83.4% full-time permanent employment rate.

SMU graduates have also gotten higher salaries, as their average gross monthly salary has gone up to S$5,057 in 2024, a 3.4% increase from last year. The median gross salary of SMU graduates also increased from S$4,500 to S$4,600.

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