Resident employment rises 4,000 in Q3

It was driven by strong hiring in outward-oriented sectors.

Resident employment in Singapore increased by 4,000 in the third quarter of 2024, reversing a seasonal decline of 600 in Q2, the Ministry of Manpower reported.

The rebound was fuelled by strong hiring in outward-oriented sectors such as information & communications, professional services, and financial services.

Non-resident employment also surged by 18,200, with most gains seen in the Construction and Manufacturing sectors, where work permit holders filled lower-skilled roles.

Singapore’s total employment rose by 22,300, nearly double the 11,300 growth in the previous quarter.

Unemployment rates remained low, with the overall rate at 1.9%, resident unemployment at 2.6%, and citizen unemployment at 2.7%. Retrenchments were also modest, totalling 3,050 in the third quarter.

Whilst labour demand remained high, job vacancies fell in September 2024 to 63,400, a decrease from 81,200 in June.

The decline was driven by reduced vacancies in sectors like construction, transportation and storage, and manufacturing, where lower-skilled positions were increasingly filled by work permit holders. Despite the drop, there were still more job vacancies than unemployed persons, with 1.39 job openings for every unemployed individual.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia