Some 9,990 Workers Laid Off In 2011, Says S'pore MOM Report

By Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah SINGAPORE, April 26 (Bernama) -- Amid more moderate economic growth, layoffs of workers increased slightly in 2011, pulled up by a rise in the fourth quarter of the year. Against a larger employment base, the overall incidence of redundancy in 2011 continued to decline to a new low. Meanwhile, the rate of re-entry into employment improved for the second successive year. These are the key findings from the “Redundancy And Reentry Into Employment, 2011” report released by the Ministry of Manpower’s Research and Statistics Department here Thursday. In the whole of 2011, some 9,990 workers were made redundant, up slightly from 9,800 in 2010. This translated to 5.5 workers made redundant for every 1,000 employees in 2011, down from 5.7 in 2010. Workers from the manufacturing sector remained the most vulnerable to redundancy, with 11 workers made redundant for every 1,000 in 2011. This was significantly more than in services (3.8 per 1,000) and construction (4.2 per 1,000). With a decline in layoffs in construction from 1,350 in 2010 to 1,050 in 2011, its share of redundancy fell from 14 per cent to 11 per cent. Manufacturing’s share dipped slightly from 46 per cent to 45 per cent, with a marginal decline in workers affected from 4,490 to 4,460. Reflecting their growing share of the workforce, layoffs in services increased from 3,960 or 40 per cent of workers made redundant in 2010 to 4,430 or 44 per cent in 2011. Layoffs fell for clerical, sales & service and production & related workers but rose for professionals, managers, executives & technicians (PMETs). While the share of redundancy taken by production & related workers declined from 50 per cent to 48 per cent over the year, they were still the highest among the three broad occupational groups. They remained more vulnerable with 7.3 workers made redundant among every 1,000 workers, compared with 5.5 among PMETs and 2.6 among clerical, sales & service workers. PMETs accounted for 42 per cent or 4,170 of the workers displaced, while the remaining 11 per cent or 1,080 were clerical, sales & service workers. While layoffs increased slightly over the year for both residents and nonresidents, the increase was smaller for residents (1.3 per cent) than non-residents (2.9 per cent). Consequently, the residents’ share of redundancy fell over the year by 0.4 percentage point to 57.4 per cent in 2011. This was lower than the residents’ share of the workforce at 67.2 per cent in 2011. Restructuring of business processes for greater efficiency (34 per cent) and high labour cost (30 per cent) were the top two reasons for redundancy. They were followed by reorganisation of businesses and high operating cost excluding labour cost (each around 25 per cent). -- BERNAMA