Citizenships & SPRs Granted to foreigners by ICA (source: ST
)
Year
Citizenships
SPRs
2002
7,600
39,500
2003
6,800
32,000
2004
7,600
36,900
2005 12,900
52,300
2006
13,200
57,300
2007
17,334
63,627
2008
20,513
79,167
If these figures are correct,
than in 2007/2008, which is in recession, there must be a huge
number of unemployment or retrenchment of Singaporean that lost
their jobs to foreigners in
Singapore.
Looking back to a report dated 30 April 2009
- the following unemployment situation can be
reviewed:-
Thursday, April
30, 2009
‘Singapore job losses highest in more than a
decade’
More Singaporeans are unemployed now than at any time before in
the last five years. The jobless rate for Singaporeans and
permanent residents hit a five-year high of 4.8 percent in March up
from 3.6 percent in December, according to the Ministry of Manpower.
The overall unemployment rate, which includes foreign workers in
Singapore, rose from 2.5 percent in December to 3.2 percent in
March.
More than 12,000 jobs were lost in the first quarter which ended
in March – the highest in more than a decade, according to
Ministry of Manpower figures going back to the
Asian financial crisis in 1998.
But that's not the biggest news at the moment as far as one
local radio station is concerned, which is giving more coverage to
the swine flu which has not yet broken out in Singapore.
Singapore's Channel NewsAsia website goes one better. It
doesn't even have any reports on uenemployment or joblessness in
Singapore at 1.30 pm today! A site search only turned up what
labour chief Lim Swee Say had to say two days ago! And nothing
about the Manpower Ministry report today!
But here's the hard news.
Employers retrenched 10,800 workers, and another 1,800 were
released from their contracts early, bringing total job cuts to
12,600 in the first quarter ended in March – up from 9,410 in the
last quarter which ended in December.
That's 3,000 more than the
8,890 jobs lost in the fourth quarter of
2001, the year of 9/11 and the dot-com bust, the
previous worst quarterly figure for job losses.
The economy shrank a record 19.7
percent between January and March.
Some 9,000 electronics workers lost their jobs, another 2,900
workers were laid off from services and 700 from construction.
The ministry says these are only preliminary estimates.
Worryingly, it says not enough new jobs are being created to
make up for the job losses.
The ministry says:
Falling external demand has severely affected the manufacturing
sector where employment declined by 19,900, deeper than the 7,000
loss in the earlier quarter. Supported by a strong pipeline of
building projects, construction employment grew by 8,500 in the
first quarter of 2009, but lower than the gains in the earlier
quarters. Services added 10,300 workers, substantially lower than
before.
But it's hardly headline news as far as the Singapore radio
station 93.8 is concerned. Top of the news this morning was what
Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Wong Kan Seng had to say
about what businesses should do if the swine flu breaks out in
Singapore and, no, the government is not planning to close the
borders as yet. The job losses were reported only at the end of the
news bulletin.
