Finance & Business World

Singapore employers fired fewer workers last quarter and increased job openings as the economy emerged from its worst recession since independence in 1965.

Employers cut 5,980 jobs in the three months ended June, compared with 12,760 in the first quarter, the Ministry of Manpower said today. That is higher than the ministry’s July estimate of 5,500. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.3 percent, unchanged from the previous quarter.

“Job losses, initially feared to reach hundreds of thousands, have surprised by being resilient to the worsening economy,” said Chow Penn Nee, an economist at United Overseas Bank Ltd. in Singapore.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has handed out cash to companies to help them reduce wage costs and prevent job losses amid the deepest global slowdown since the 1930s. Singapore’s economy expanded for the first time in a year last quarter as manufacturing and services began to recover from the slump.

There were 24,500 job vacancies last quarter, an 8 percent seasonally adjusted increase from the prior three months. That was the first gain after four quarters of declines, according to today’s report.

The number of layoffs this year will likely be lower than the 30,000 peak of the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the Straits Times reported last month, citing Lim Swee Say, secretary- general of the National Trades Unions Congress. The jobless rate is also unlikely to match the peak of 4.3 percent during the 2003 SARS epidemic, Lim was cited as saying.

Seagate Closure

Employers retrenched 5,170 workers, and another 810 were released from their contracts early between April and June. The jobless rate is the highest in four years.

United Overseas Bank predicts about 36,000 jobs will be lost this year, pushing the unemployment rate to 3.7 percent. Singapore’s jobless rate may reach 3.8 percent at the end of 2009, compared with a June estimate of 4.2 percent, a central bank survey of economists published this month showed.

Seagate Technology, the world’s largest maker of hard-disk drives, said last month it will close one of its factories in Singapore by the end of 2010, affecting as many as 2,000 employees.

Total employment in the Southeast Asian economy shrank 7,700 in the second quarter as manufacturing payrolls fell, the manpower ministry said today.

Average wages before adjusting for inflation fell 2.2 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the ministry said, after declining 3.7 percent in the previous three months.

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