Singapore jobseekers are still looking to work from home, but employers may be feeling otherwise

SINGAPORE: Jobseekers in Singapore are still interested in working from home. Employers, however, are offering fewer positions that involve remote work.

Data from Indeed, a US-based global employment website for job listings, shows that 6.6 per cent of employment postings contain “work from home” or “remote work” in their descriptions in May of this year, a figure far lower than in late 2021.

But one out of every 28 job searches still contains references to remote work, keywords that are still among the most popular search terms in Singapore.

“Jobseekers continue to value the flexibility offered by remote work. It’ll be interesting to see whether this apparent disconnect between employers and jobseekers hampers the ability of some employers to attract suitable candidates going forward,” Callam Pickering, the APAC Senior Economist at Indeed, is quoted as saying in The Economic Times last week.

Job postings on Indeed for Singapore showed a 1.2 per cent decrease in May compared to the previous month, marking the seventh straight month of decline and leaving postings fewer by 16.5 per cent than one year ago. This is the lowest number of Singapore postings since September 2021.

However, the May figure is still 1.7 times higher than pre-pandemic.

“Singapore’s labour market is still incredibly tight with strong demand for worker and low unemployment. Nevertheless, job posting volumes continue to decline, down for seven consecutive months. A more challenging economic environment, including a global slowdown, will likely lead to a further decline in job postings over the remainder of the year,” added Mr Pickering.

With the Singapore economy contracting in the first quarter of the year, the decrease in the number of jobs posted is the first real sign of the slowdown affecting the labour market, Mr Pickering told Digital News Asia.

He added that the country’s unemployment rate, currently at 1.8 per cent, is likely to increase for the rest of the year. /TISG

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