Career Enhancement for PMETs with Government Schemes

1 Ms Foo Mee Har asked the Minister for Manpower whether he can provide an update on whether local PMETs have enhanced career opportunities as a result of various Government interventions.

The Minister for Manpower (Mr Lim Swee Say): Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to display some slides during my reply, please?

Mr Speaker: Yes, please. [Slides were shown to hon Members.]

Mr Lim Swee Say: To enhance career opportunities for our local workforce, we have acted on four fronts: first, transforming our economy to be more innovative, productive and manpower-lean so that we can remain competitive and create enough good jobs for our people; second, strengthening lifelong learning through the SkillsFuture movement so as to enhance the employability of our local workforce throughout their working life; third, helping more local professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) under the Adapt and Grow (A&G) initiative to adapt better to the rapid pace of technological change so that they can grow in their current careers or switch to new careers; and last but not least, raising the qualifying criteria of Employment Pass and strengthening the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) so as to improve the complementarity of local and foreign PMETs.

Outcomes have been positive. Our economy has become more manpower-lean and our workforce more productive. Manpower growth has slowed from 4% in 2014 to 2% in 2015, and to 1% last year. What is even more encouraging is that productivity growth has also improved to 1% last year, after remaining flat since 2012. With even higher productivity growth this year than last year, we are making steady progress towards our medium-term growth strategy of 1% growth in manpower and 2% growth in productivity for a 3% growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per annum. From this diagram (Annex A), Members can see that we are making a transition from a "4+0=4" situation, which means 4% manpower growth and 0% increase in productivity, towards the growth strategy of "1+2=3". Over the last few years, we have been making steady progress towards that outcome.

The PMET share of the resident workforce has also improved in the last three years from 53.5% in 2014 to 56.1% in 2017. In other words, 56% of the resident workforce today is doing PMET jobs. The rate of increase is at a faster rate than the previous three years.

What is also worth noting is the share of nett PMET employment growth that went to our local PMETs. The three-year moving average has improved significantly over the last few years, from about 50% five years ago – in other words, one local PMET versus one foreign PMET – to about 75% in the past three years – or three local PMETs versus one foreign PMET (Annex B).

Likewise, real median incomes, including employer Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions of full-time employed residents, have risen by 4.3% per annum from 2014 to 2016, much higher than 2.4% per annum from 2011 to 2014. This faster rate of increase in our medium wage is a reflection of improvement in the quality of jobs for our resident workforce.

Moving forward, there is still much to do to create more and better job opportunities for our local workforce. Unemployment and long-term unemployment rates have risen, though marginally, in past two years. We need to, first, bring total employment growth up to about 25,000 to 40,000 a year to keep unemployment down; second, improve the quality of jobs to minimise under-employment; and third, minimise job-skills mismatches so as to prevent unemployment from becoming structural and sticky.

Our economic agencies and tripartite partners will continue to transform industries, from manufacturing to services and construction. For example, Singaporeans can look forward to good jobs that harness technology in artificial intelligence in infocomm and media, data analytics in electronics manufacturing, financial technology (FinTech) in finance and banking, and prefabrication technology in construction. More industry Transformation Maps (ITMs) will be launched progressively in the coming months. Together, we aim to achieve and sustain nett employment growth of about 25,000 to 40,000 a year. This is lower than the high job growth of 120,000 a year three to five years ago which was not sustainable, but is higher than the low job growth of less than 10,000 last year.

More importantly, through these ITMs, we aim to improve the quality of jobs pervasively across all sectors, in other words, to make every job a better job.

We will also continue to strengthen the SkillsFuture movement to equip our people with the skills needed for the future economy, in other words, to make every worker a better worker. For instance, the Ministry of Education (MOE) recently announced the SkillsFuture Series to provide working adults with industry-relevant skills in eight priority and emerging skills areas that draw reference from the ITMs.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM), together with our tripartite partners, will press on with our A&G efforts to support more local PMETs of all ages from all industries to grow in their current careers or pursue new career opportunities in new and key growth sectors. We will also help speed up the transfer of advanced and emerging expertise from outside of Singapore to our local workforce through the newly launched Capability Transfer Programme.

Beyond these efforts of the Government and the tripartite partners, our local PMETs must be prepared to adapt and grow to stay relevant and seize new opportunities. Likewise, employers must also do their part to be inclusive and adopt fair and progressive hiring practices.

In this regard, I am encouraged that more local PMETs and more employers are making good use of A&G programmes. In the first half of this year, about 1,500 local PMETs have undergone skills conversion through Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs). This is more than double that in the same period last year.

Likewise, in the first six months of this year, nearly 1,500 employers participated in A&G programmes, such as the PCPs and P-MAX. This is almost the total number for the whole of last year.

As a result, the number of local jobseekers who secured jobs successfully with the help of the A&G programmes has continued to increase and remain inclusive. In the first eight months of this year, out of more than 16,000 successful job placements, more than half of them, or 58%, are PMETs. And more than half, or 53%, are more than 40 years old, and almost 30%, to be exact 29%, are more than 50 years old; and 30% were long-term unemployed before we found jobs for them. In other words, they found jobs after being unemployed for longer than six months.

This inclusive profile of job placement is, indeed, encouraging. We will keep doing more, doing better for local PMETs and our local workforce.

Mr Speaker, with the strong commitment of individuals, employers and the tripartite partners, we are confident that we can strive for healthy employment outcomes as we transform, adapt and grow together, not just as an innovative economy, but also as an inclusive workforce.

Mr Speaker: Ms Foo Mee Har.

Ms Foo Mee Har (West Coast): Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister for a very comprehensive set of replies. I am sure the Minister would agree with me that one of the most urgent priorities is to help displaced mid-career persons. Many of them still have mortgages to pay, children still going to school and they have 20 to 25 years more of productive working life.

The Minister did share some encouraging updates in terms of numbers. On the ground, the sense is that there are still a lot of challenges and hardship faced by many of these families. Please give us some sense of what that 1,500 successful cases represent, what is this as a percentage of the total population that the Ministry is still helping?

Specifically, as we see the Government rolling out the ITMs, I would like to ask the Minister, how is the PCP aligned to the ITMs so as to support career-switch efforts towards growth sectors, so that it is very targeted, and also, with the close involvement of prospective employers in the design and delivery of internship and training programmes?

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mr Speaker, firstly, I share the same concerns as Ms Foo Mee Har regarding the impact of the ongoing restructuring on our mid-career PMETs. This time round, we can see that 70% of the workers affected by redundancy are the PMETs. This is the reason why under our A&G initiative, we pay particular attention to the PMETs. Among the PMETs affected, those who are more than 40 years old, or the mid-career mature PMETs, our concern is that they may need more support to remain employable. This is the reason why we have been enhancing our support for the mature PMETs in our A&G programmes. For example, we give them a higher wage support of up to 90%, spread out over a longer duration for the PCP of up to 18 months, and so on.

I want to point out that the number of PMETs that we have helped is more than the 1,500 that went through the PCP. As I had mentioned earlier, in the first eight months of this year, we have helped 16,000 local jobseekers to secure jobs. Out of these, 58% are PMETs. So, if we take 58% of 16,000, we will come to almost 10,000 local PMETs who managed to secure jobs with the help provided for under the A&G programmes. PCP is one of them. Of the 10,000 who successfully found jobs, not every one of them needed to go through professional conversion. There is a split between missed-match and mismatch. Missed-match means they are job ready except that they need some help to secure jobs through our job-matching services. Only for those who face difficulty in the mismatch of skill, wage expectation and so on, we would help them with the Career Support Programme (CSP) and PCP.

I would say that by looking ahead into the future, we expect the proportion of PMETs who have to overcome mismatch is going to continue to grow. That is the reason why we continue to expand PCP to more and more sectors. I expect the number of PMETs participating in PCP to continue to grow.

On the question about how PCP aligns with ITM, this is a very important question. We look at the 23 ITM sectors and our assessment is that about five sectors will contribute to about 60% of the PMET job creation in the medium term. These sectors are finance and banking, infocomm and media, healthcare, wholesale trade and professional services. These five sectors combined together will account for 60% of the PMET job creation in the medium term.

MOM is, therefore, working closely with the respective economic agencies and Ministries to see how we can step up our efforts to help: firstly, more of the PMETs in these five sectors to remain employable within their companies, what we call in-company PCP, so that even though their jobs are at risk today, we can help them to update their skills and remain employable within the same company; secondly, for those who for whatever reasons are being affected by company redundancy, to help them to remain in the same industry, and so there is an intra-sector PCP; and thirdly, to help those who are affected by redundancy elsewhere to convert and come into these growing sectors through inter-sector PCP.

This focused effort has started. In the coming months, Members can expect to see many more initiatives being launched.

Mr Speaker: Mr Patrick Tay.

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (West Coast): I thank the Minister for sharing the very positive labour market statistics, especially in relation to the PMET employment rate. I just have a question to ask or one suggestion to make. Yes, the ITMs have raised quite a few growth sectors, in particular, the five mentioned, but I also notice that for many of these growth sectors, most of these jobs require skills that are pretty specialised and so there are quite a bit of "barriers to entry". Yes, initial efforts have been promising, but I hope the Ministry, together with our tripartite partners, can do even more, in particular, to plug this gap, and make it more pervasive. Also, for the employers, some mindsets have to change. We hope employers will be more open. They will not be able to get "plug-and-play" people, but they can be more open to hiring so that, as what the Minister shared earlier, we can not only make every job a better job and every worker a better worker, but also every employer a better employer.

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mr Speaker, I fully agree with the Member. In the future, under the ITM, we can expect to see more and more sectors requiring advanced and specialised skills. And yet, at the same time, we also need to inculcate in our PMETs the ability to adapt. In other words, they have to re-specialise within their job sectors and their career and, at the same time, they must be prepared to keep re-specialising repeatedly.

I also fully agree that tripartite partnership is very important in changing the mindset of the employer, changing the mindset of the worker. At the end of the day, we can only truly succeed if we are able to get every employer to come on board to make every job a better job, and if we are able to get every worker to come on board to adapt and grow so that we can make every worker a better worker. And hopefully, through our tripartite partners, we can match every better job to every better worker, and every better worker to every job, so that we do not have a problem with unemployment, under-employment and structural unemployment.

Mr Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh.here1

Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied): With regard to the Government's four-prong strategy to improve career opportunities for PMETs, can I ask the Minister what have been the main challenges and limitations for the Government in pursuing new initiatives to improve career opportunities for PMETs, and what have been the downsides of the Ministry's efforts? What does it intend to do to urge individuals to take the Ministry's plans a bit more seriously?

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mr Speaker, this is also a very important question. The pace of the restructuring, obviously, is not even across all sectors, across all companies. But what has happened in the last few years, as I had mentioned earlier, is that through this four-prong approach, our economy has become more manpower-lean. As a result, more and more companies have come to the realisation that counting on manpower-driven growth, as it was the past, is no longer relevant in future. In other words, we are seeing more companies now preparing to transform instead of coming to MOM to ask us to relax on the foreign worker policy. In fact, more and more of them are now coming forward to ask us what we can do to help them to become manpower-lean.

One example is the Lean Enterprise Development (LED) scheme launched last year. The purpose of the LED scheme is to encourage more and more small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in particular, to become more manpower-lean and to become more resource-lean, rather than to keep asking for more foreign workers.

Last year, about 2,000 SMEs took part in this programme. By now, after about 20 months, the total number has exceeded 5,000. So, we are seeing a very healthy increase. This coming Friday, we are holding our second annual symposium on the LED scheme where the tripartite partners will be coming together to take stock of what we have achieved together in the last two years, and how we can do even more moving forward. For example, up to now, we help mainly company by company, enterprise by enterprise. We are now looking at how we can get groups of companies to come together, so that instead of just working on the development of Lean Enterprise, we can work together towards the development of Lean Industry. So, we learn together, adapt together and grow together.

Mr Speaker: Er Dr Lee Bee Wah.

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): Mr Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister: in the recent retrenchment by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), may I know what is the help given to those who are retrenched and have they found other jobs?

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mr Speaker, again, this is an important question. Retrenchment has gone up in the last two years. What the tripartite partners – the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), MOM, together with the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) – did was we formed a retrenchment response task force. What this task force does is, firstly, we monitor whether the retrenchment was done in a responsible manner. Secondly, in what way can we provide greater support to the workers, including the PMETs affected?

The support that we have provided is not just to SPH. We have extended the same level of support to all the workers affected by retrenchments since last year. And this year, more are being done.

Mr Speaker: Ms Foo Mee Har.

Ms Foo Mee Har: Mr Speaker, just a quick clarification. In terms of the 10,000 PMETs who were successfully helped, again, I just want to have a sense of the dimension of the problem on the ground. What was the proportion helped, compared to the overall base? How many more do we need to help? We have successfully helped 10,000. How many out there do we need to find good careers for?

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mr Speaker, our local workforce is about 2.2 million. Of this 2.2 million, on the average, every year, about 180,000 to 200,000 would leave our resident workforce. It could be for retirement, further studies or to take a break from their job and career and so on.

At the same time, about the same number, 180,000 to 200,000 would re-enter the workforce. They are either new entrants or re-entrants. For example, people who go for further studies come back to work; people who took a break and come back to work. So, every year, if you look at the turnover of our resident workforce, it is about 180,000 to 200,000. Of the 180,000 to 200,000 who come back to the workforce, not all of them would need help from Workforce Singapore (WSG) or the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i). In fact, the vast majority are able to find employment on their own.

Of those who need additional help and come to WSG or e2i, for the PMETs, our success rate is about 65%. In other words, for every three local PMETs who need job placement assistance from WSG or e2i, we are able to successfully secure jobs for two out of three. For the other one-third, even though we are not able to succeed in getting job placements for them, it does not mean that all of them would remain unemployed. Some of them will go on on their own to find their own jobs. I hope this will give the Member the big picture.

Mr Speaker: Mr Azmoon Ahmad.

Mr Azmoon Ahmad (Nominated Member): Can the Minister help by sharing the statistics on the success rate by ethnicities of PMETs, especially for the Malay community?

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mr Speaker, I do not have on hand the racial breakdown, but I do ask for it from time to time. From the numbers that I have seen so far, by breakdown in terms of racial groups and gender, they are quite inclusive.

In fact, if I remember correctly – I stand to be corrected – the percentage of the minority racial groups who are successfully placed is, in fact, higher than the workforce average.