Retrenchments double in Q422

There were almost 3,000 people retrenched in the last quarter of 2022.

With many businesses restructuring their organisations, retrenchments in Singapore doubled in Q422 to 2,990. In Q3, there were only 1,300 retrenchments.

Despite the increase, retrenchments in 2022 remained low compared to pre-pandemic years at 6,440.

The Ministry of Manpower (MoM) added that the percentage of retrenched residents who found employment, six months post-retrenchment, increased to 73.1% in Q4, the highest since Q215 (73.6%).

With many more finding employment in Q4, the total number of employed for 2022 reached 2.9% above its pre-pandemic level, growing by 227,800.

Growth was seen for resident and non-resident employment, increasing by 26,300 and 201,600, respectively.

Resident employment grew in outward-oriented sectors such as Financial Services, Information & Communications and Professional Services, whilst non-residential employment increased primarily due to the hiring of Work Permit Holders (WP+) in sectors such as Construction and Manufacturing.

With an increase in employment, unemployment rate dropped to 2.1% in 2022 from 2.7% in 2021.

Follow the link for more news on

Ministry of Manpower

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