Finally, some good news about the Singapore’s economy
With Facebook making headlines about their move to Marina One from Beach Road, many are hopeful for more job openings at these large tech giants. Good news, large companies are not the only ones expecting to grow their employment pool, a recent survey shows SME’s are looking to hire as well.
Despite Singapore’s pessimistic expected growth, along with SMEs’ concerns of high staff costs and rent, companies are still set to grow their talent pool—with nearly 30% of them likely to hire. Which is a surprising jump from last year’s 20%.
This might reflect SMEs’ beliefs that negative growth is short-term, with positive growth expected to start in the latter part of 2017.
However, high growth rates expected in other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam might not be mirrored here, given the status of Singapore’s “open, developed and trade-dependent” economy, which makes us more vulnerable to global economic conditions compared to other developing economies in the region.
Growing IT Sector
Recruitment in the IT sector is expected to grow prominently with our government envisioning a prospering start-up environment in Singapore. One such future initiative was unveiled in the Committee for Future Economy plan which aims to create the “world’s first solutions” for Singaporeans to stay competitive in the regions and globally.
Sentiments on the businesses’ side reflect similar expectations for government support in their transition to the digital economy. Currently, 74% of firms utilise social media to promote their businesses; when in essence, all firms need to digitalise. In the survey, 19.4% of the firms are expecting to grow their online presence.
Based on the Asia Job Index, the number of IT jobs advertised in Singapore in the fourth quarter of last year surged 30 % year-on-year, despite a decline of 1.4 per cent in the overall number of jobs advertised here for the same period of time, as reported The Straits Times.
TPG, the Australian telco firm that recently won the bid to become Singapore’s fourth telco, will be expected to hire more telecommunication professionals when they commence their service this year. Google will take on more engineers, as well as Amazon who introduced 126 new job listings in Singapore. Smaller start-ups like Grab will be looking to expand their presence too. While there are increasing numbers for jobs, salaries are not expected to grow anytime given the “tight budget constraints”. And possibly, the demand for more millennials and junior talents to fill these tech roles.
