Today, I was thinking about Chris K’s recent comment that our unemployment rate was creeping up despite better economic growth. This (And his siblings eant about him) reminded me about PM’s May Day speech on the economy.
The constructive, mainstream media (often quoting employers) is forever bashing our young for a sense of entitlement.
Reading the u/m, it’s not difficult to see where this sense of entitlement comes from (Think Queen Fu or the Hen or Queen Jos). Can our ministers continue to say that they deserve their million dollar salaries when our employment can only creep up? Note that Japan’s unemployment rate is 2.8%, only slightly more than ours.
As Singapore wrestles with slower economic growth and disruptive technological changes, challenges have emerged in the local labour market.
In his annual May Day speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted that unemployment increased last year and even with better growth in 2017, the Government expects a “steady trickle of redundancies” as the economy continues to restructure.
He added that other developed countries are seeing much higher unemployment of between 5 to 10 per cent, and as Singapore grapples with similar pressures as these mature economies, the local unemployment rate – which stood at 2.3 per cent as of March 2017 – “will gradually go up”.
Pressures that such economies face include an ageing workforce, technological changes and a global economy that has yet to completely shake off the ills of the 2008 global financial crisis, economists told Channel NewsAsia.
Read more at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-s-unemployment-rate-how-much-higher-could-it-rise-8818602
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 