Unemployed graduates rose 130% in 3 years, says Redditor citing government data

SINGAPORE: After a local Reddit user did the math related to recent graduates finding jobs, they wrote that there was a 130 per cent increase in unemployed public university graduates from 2021 to 2024.

After SkillsFuture Singapore published the data from the latest Private Education Institution Graduate Employment Survey on May 26, u/PretentiousnPretty wrote that they decided to look up the graduate employment surveys from the past years to see if they could find any trends.

“With reference to the graduate employment survey in the article above, and this article, I’ve extracted the following employment statistics for autonomous (public) universities. Proportion of graduates in the labour force who were unemployed: 2021-5.6%, 2022-6.2%, 2023-10.4%, 2024-12.9%.”

The post author focused on the significant increase in this number from 2021 to 2024, adding, “Why then, is it, that some people are still in denial about this phenomenon, why do they refuse to look at the causes, consequences and solutions?” they asked, inviting fellow users on the platform to weigh in with answers.

A commenter who said they help young people as they start out with their careers replied by citing the proportion of graduates in the labour force who were unemployed previous to 2020, which tells another story. While in 2020 the figure had been 6.4%, from 2016 to 2019, it ranged from 9.3% to 11.1 per cent.

“Okay, so it seems like 2024’s figure isn’t that much higher than the pre-Covid years? I’m not saying that fresh graduates aren’t facing many challenges today. But the situation isn’t as dire as your tone seems to be suggesting,” the commenter wrote, adding that the figures the post author had cited had been “significantly distorted” by the pandemic.

“This was a time when the share of non-Singaporeans working in Singapore was overwhelmingly low. People wanted to go home to their country of origin, and there just weren’t enough workers to go around,” they added.

As for the reasons why new graduates are having a hard time landing jobs today, the commenter listed three things that contribute to this: technological advancements, with AI taking over many tasks; earlier mass layoffs, especially in the tech sector; and the imposition of tariffs, which is likely to have caused companies to put a pause on expansion.

“I can assure you that we have graduates who are very, very hungry. But we also have students and graduates who can be over-ambitious. I’ve spoken with students who want a $10K a month role straight out of graduation, but do not even know the requirements or skills they need to bring to the table to command those salaries straight out of the gate,” they added. /TISG

Read related: Weaker hiring demand meant fewer private uni grads found full-time jobs in 2024