Number of Workers who Secure Jobs at Government-supported Job Fairs

16 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Manpower how many workers have successfully found jobs through Government-supported job fairs each year over the past 10 years.

The Minister for Manpower (Mr Lim Swee Say): Mdm Speaker, to maximise successful job matching, our integrated package of services and programmes include not just job fairs but also career guidance and counselling, job search coaching, employability camps as well as placement programmes, such as the Professional Conversion Programme (PCP), Career Support Programme (CSP) and an enhanced Place-and-Train programme targeted at professionals, managers and executives (P-Max).

In the past 10 years from 2007 to September 2016, the first nine months of last year, Government-funded career services and programmes, including job fairs, operated mainly by the Workforce Development Agency, now Workforce Singapore (WSG), and the National Trades Union Congress-Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), have helped more than 160,000 jobseekers to secure employment. On an annual basis, the number of successful job placement ranges from a high of more than 24,000 in 2009 to a low of about 13,000 in 2008, with an annual average of over 16,000.

In assisting our jobseekers, we make a special effort to help older jobseekers and the long-term unemployed, as I have mentioned earlier, and the outcome has been encouraging. Over the years, the profile of workers placed by our career centres has become more inclusive. The share of professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMET) placements has increased from 10% in 2007, 10 years ago, to 37% in the first nine months of 2016, so from one in 10 to now one in three PMET jobseekers, while the proportion of older workers aged 50 and above has increased from 29% 10 years ago to 39% last year.

What is even more encouraging is that 35% of those who successfully found jobs in the first nine months of 2016 were previously long-term unemployed, which means unemployed for six months or more. As I have mentioned, we pay special attention to them and, as a result, of all the successful jobseekers we served last year, 35% were previously long-term unemployed.

Through continued efforts with our tripartite partners, we will strive to quicken the transformation of industry to create better jobs and, at the same time, quicken the re-development of our workforce to create better skills. We will also keep strengthening our career matching services to minimise missed matches and mismatches in the local market as we go through this period of economic transition.

Mdm Speaker: Mr Leon Perera.

Mr Leon Perera (Non-Constituency Member): I thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply. I have just a few supplementary questions. Firstly, does the Minister have the data for the last three years so that we will know the trend for the total number of successful job placements from the totality of all the schemes for the last three years?

Secondly, specifically on the Government-supported job fairs, does the Ministry actually track outcome specifically from that mechanism from the job fairs? A few other questions from that. For these job fairs, is there a mechanism to ensure that employers who participate have a minimum number of jobs that are up for offer before they are actually allowed to participate in these fairs? Those are my supplementary questions.

Mr Lim Swee Say: Mdm Speaker, the number of job placements over the last three years: in 2014, it was 17,500; 2015, 16,600; and the first nine months of last year, 14,900. Over the last 10 years, the numbers fluctuated up and down. It all depends on how many jobseekers came to us. We do not turn away jobseekers. Jobseekers who need help, they just have to come to us and we will respond accordingly. That is what we do.

Secondly, in terms of job fairs, let me put it this way. Jobseekers coming to us to look for jobs, we will help them in various ways. First, one to one. For every jobseeker, we look at his or her skills profile, career interest, and we look for a suitable job for him. So, a one-to-one matching. In some cases, it is group to group. For example, a company has a retrenchment exercise, 20 workers were retrenched. For the group of 20 workers, we look for a group of employers. We will bring the employers to the company to do a group-to-group matching and try to help the 20 workers to find 20 jobs. In other cases, we go for the "many to many" approach. Job fairs are an example where we organise a job fair − typically about 400 jobs per job fair − and the number of jobseekers attending can run into hundreds and thousands. We do not keep track of them.

The reason why we do not keep track of them is because the job fair serves various purposes. In some cases, jobseekers are not looking to work but we want to encourage them. For example, in a community, we want to encourage more of our older residents to take on employment. So, we would bring employers with jobs in the community to the Community Centre to draw them out. As a result, we have residents with no intention to work, but having attended our job fair, they said, "Oh, I did not know that nearby there are such job openings." So, this is the first objective.

The second objective is that we have jobseekers who are not active jobseekers or what we call the passive jobseekers. They have jobs today, they are not in a hurry to get a job. But they would like to know what is available. For example, when we organise a job fair with the hotel industry, many workers from other sectors come to attend and understand better where the hotel sector is heading in case one day they need to move on to this sector. Of course, lastly, those who are looking for jobs.

Because of this, we have not been able to track how many jobseekers have found jobs through job fairs because, at the end of the day, the jobseekers were not served directly by us. On the part of the employers, we leave it to them to compete for the workers.

The bottom line is this: jobseekers who are not able to find jobs through jobs fairs are most welcomed to come to WSG and e2i to register as jobseekers so that we can help them with one-to-one or group-to-group additional services.

3.00 pm

Mdm Speaker: Order. End of Question Time.

[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), provided that Members had not asked for questions standing in their names to be postponed to a later Sitting day or withdrawn, written answers to questions not reached by the end of Question Time are reproduced in the Appendix.]