Labour Market Trends In 3rd Quarter 2001

  The labour market continued to be plagued by the rapidly deteriorating economic environment.

  The third quarter saw the employment pool shrinking, partly on account of rising retrenchment and falling job openings, thereby exacerbating unemployment pressures.

  Besides the less educated, those with higher skilled are not spared from the adverse impact of the downturn on the labour market.

  Against the backdrop of a contracting economy, total employment in the third quarter fell by 12,452, as opposed to a gain of 3,289 in the quarter before and 30,029 in the same period last year.

  This decline marked the end of the quarterly increases experienced since the second quarter of 1999 following the recovery from the Asian economic crisis.

  Manufacturing's third consecutive job loss in the quarter (-3,805) pared down compared to the quarter before (-5,087) while construction employment continued its downward slide  (-4,869) for the fourth straight quarter.

  Services, which held up in the previous quarter, also lost ground in the third quarter with a cutback of 3,760 jobs - its first employment contraction since the Asian crisis.

  Unemployment pressures accelerated in the quarter. The seasonally adjusted overall unemployment rate spiked up from 2.6% in June to 3.8% in September 2001, heading towards the high of 4.4% registered in December 1998 during the last economic downturn.

   The corresponding rate for the resident labour force was 4.0% in September compared with 3.0% in June 2001.

  Retrenchment continued to mount as companies shed workers in the face of falling demand. 8,368 workers were retrenched in the third quarter of 2001, exceeding the previous peak of 8,013 laid off during the last quarter of 1998 amid the Asian economic crisis.

  This brought the total number of retrenched workers in the first nine months of this year to 17,247.

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