hope those affected would emerge stronger.
Graduates
Baptism of fire
A bad, choppy ride ahead for Singapore’s better-educated, who
rarely lived through a real economic crisis.
By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
Mar 21, 2009
YOU’RE hired ... sorry, I mean fired – headlined a recent story
concerning Singapore’s worst job slump for graduates.
It described the plight of a final-year economics student who lost
her job in an American bank that was offered to her last November
before she graduated.
She was one of at least three others from the National University
of Singapore who were similarly “retrenched” by troubled firms –
even before they had done a single day of work.
She had planned to spend her first pay cheque on a holiday to
Europe. Instead a letter arrived revoking her job.
For this island state, the rapid disappearance of jobs has become
the biggest single problem, next to the economic crisis itself. It
affects all, from the highly educated to the uneducated.
But the biggest impact is felt by graduates, who make up more than
half the number of the new jobless – and concerns are
increasing.
In a survey of 100 graduating students who completed degree courses
this year, more than half said they were afraid of heading into the
real world, a newspaper reproved.
Their concern has been proven to be sound.
The government has just announced that the number of unemployed
graduates more than doubled last year to 14,800 in December from
6,200 a year earlier.
(For comparison, the local universities are graduating some 17,000
youths this year, with an estimated 8,000-10,000 more from foreign
institutions.)
Degree and diploma holders form the biggest number of dismissed
workers in Singapore. In the last quarter of 2008, half the
retrenched were professionals, managers, executives and
technicians.
New graduates are the worst affected. “They are all fighting for
the same jobs and fresh grads are at a disadvantage compared with
those with experience,” said bank economist Irvin Seah.
Adding to the tight market is the return of thousands who have
finished studies abroad.
One of the 4,000 who came back from America said he might seek a
job here because many US firms are shying away from hiring foreign
nationals.
Singapore is in this straits because for more than a decade, it had
joined others like China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, to significantly
increase the number of graduates to meet a higher-skill
economy.
Today, about 20% of the annual school cohort ends up with a degree,
40% a diploma and much of the rest with some form of technical
certificate.
This higher education has helped to create the current middle-class
Singapore, the richest country in Southeast Asia, with 90% of the
citizens owning homes.
In better times, a married couple with general degrees and three
years working experience could earn a combined S$7,000-S$8,000 a
month.
But as recession set in last year, thousands have become unemployed
and many others are working with reduced wages – working shorter
weeks or taking pay or bonus cuts.
It is a national dilemma.
Unless graduate unemployment is reversed, the middle class here
faces erosion and social problems and poverty could set in.
Out-of-work graduates are unable to service their home payments or
maintain their family. More couples may decide not to have
children.
When he was Prime Minister during the early days of
university-building, Lee Kuan Yew had said that Singapore would
avoid countries like India, in producing too many jobless
graduates.
With an able mind and higher expectations, too many of them would
sit idly around coffee shops hatching revolutions, he
explained.
For the first time, the government has announced a scheme to offer
subsidies to recession-hit banks and financial firms which take on
new graduates – probably as an intern programme.
Those firms would be given subsidies for the recruits’ allowances
for up to a year, if they take in a minimum – possibly 10 – of new
graduates. If the recession worsens, the scheme could be extended
to other major corporations, one executive said.
“It will help companies to build up their talent pool and better
position themselves when the economy picks up in the long run,”
said a bank official.
Job risks remain very high as the economy heads for a forecast 5%
fall in 2009, particularly in hardest-hit finance, manufacturing,
airlines, shipping and retailing.
In the face of all these, Singaporeans have become more pessimistic
than resource-rich Southeast Asian countries about how long they
can survive without a job.
A survey by insurance group, AIA says only 19% think they could go
more than two years without their main source of income, compared
with 27% last year.
Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang has assured Parliament
that more than 30,000 jobs would be created this year, enough to
absorb the pool of fresh graduates and new job seekers.
Most retrenched are resilient, fitting into a lower job – but not
without problems. A graduate who applied to be a bus conductor was
rejected because he was over-qualified.
Another trouble is competition from foreigners who have a higher
qualification and a lower pay expectation.
A Singapore engineer (diploma) was recently retrenched from a
S$2,600 (RM6,300)-a-month technical sales job, which was taken over
by a Myanmar post-graduate who accepted a pay of S$1,500.
The graduates crisis is not only reducing Singapore’s middle class,
but also the population itself.
The next two years may force the exit of 200,000 unemployed foreign
workers (and 100,000 locals), says Credit Suisse. This could mean
the total population will fall by 3.3% to 4.68m by 2010.
Given the deepening economic crisis “maybe a smaller Singapore will
be better,” commented a letter to the press.
at least these young chaps HAVE A DEGREE!
whatabout uncles like us that had no way of getting a proper
degrees? who will pity us?
