Hiring slowed down in Q1 2012

Overall unemployment rate also went up slightly to 2.1% from 2% in the fourth quarter.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore noted:

The labour market added an estimated 27,400 workers in Q1 2012, down from 37,600 in the preceding quarter. This was largely due to the seasonal slowdown in the hospitality-related segments as well as generally weaker hiring sentiments in services and manufacturing.

The manufacturing sector saw net job losses of 500, marking the second consecutive quarter of employment contraction. The services sector expanded headcount by 19,800, which was considerably lower than that in Q1 2011. However, the strong employment expansion of 8,000 in the construction sector provided some offset.

In line with the slower pace of job creation, the seasonally adjusted overall unemployment rate rose slightly to 2.1% in Q1 2012, from 2.0% in Q4 2011, while the resident unemployment rate inched up to 3.0% from 2.9% the quarter before. The marginal increase in unemployment rates was accompanied by a moderation in wage growth, from 4.0% y-o-y in Q4 2011 to 0.9% in Q1 2012.

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