Hiring outlook weakens for third quarter in a row
SINGAPORE: Hiring optimism in Singapore declined for the coming third quarter of the year, marking a dip in sentiment for three consecutive quarters.

The latest fall is driven by finance and real estate employers turning more cautious amid subdued growth and cost challenges.

The net employment outlook for the finance and real estate sector fell by 30 percentage points to 15%, according to results from the latest quarterly employment outlook survey conducted by recruitment firm ManpowerGroup and released yesterday.

The metric is a measure of hiring optimism, defined as the percentage of companies surveyed that intend to take on new staff, minus the percentage that intend to downsize.

However, the transport, logistics and automotive sector’s robust net outlook of 47%, the highest of the nine sectors studied, cushioned the drop.

The figure is up 27 percentage points from the quarter before and 25 percentage points year-on-year, and is the second-highest figure for the sector in the 42 markets ManpowerGroup surveyed.

Only Ireland posted a stronger net outlook for the sector, at 50%, in the latest poll, which was conducted in April.

Meanwhile, the outlook in communication services, which include the media and telecommunications, remained dismal at negative 33%, worsening from the negative 29% in the previous quarter.

It is the only sector here to post a negative outlook in the latest survey.

ManpowerGroup’s poll of 525 employers in nine sectors here on their hiring plans in the quarter ahead – the third quarter of 2024 – found net employment outlook to be 20% overall.

While 44% of employers here anticipate hiring more people, 24% anticipate a fall in headcount, and 32% expect staffing levels to remain unchanged.

Healthcare and life sciences, as well as industrials and materials, were two other sectors with higher net employment outlooks of over 30%.

Net employment outlook in the information technology sector saw a relatively modest decline from 28% to 20%.

Meanwhile, the net employment outlook for other sectors declined from 28% to 21%.

Linda Teo, country manager at ManpowerGroup Singapore, said the bulk of the dip in hiring sentiment can be attributed to companies making strategic moves to streamline their business, such as looking offshore to cut costs or fill the skills gap.

“As flexible working arrangements gain more traction in the country, more companies are likely to consider remote workers to fill the growing discrepancy between workers’ skills and the demands of available jobs,” she added.

The survey also studied net employment outlook according to employer size, with those polled sorted into six sizes, ranging from those with fewer than 10 employees to those with 5,000 or more staff.

Organisations of all sizes, except micro-organisations employing fewer than 10 people, anticipated headcount growth, like in the previous quarter.

However, the net employment outlook for very large organisations with between 1,000 and 4,999 employees took a hit, posting 6%, which is down 40 percentage points from 46% in the previous quarter.

The segment went from reporting the strongest outlook in the previous quarter to the second-worst, in a reversal of fortunes.

Instead, small firms with 10 to 49 employees reported the strongest outlook of 46%, while micro-organisations with under 10 employees reported a negative 8% outlook. — The Straits Times/ANN
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Hiring optimism in Singapore declined for the coming third quarter of the year, marking a dip in sentiment for three consecutive quarters.