Measures to Assist Employees Affected by COVID-19 and Digital Disruptions

Ms Hany Soh asked the Minister for Manpower in respect of job vacancies being at an all-time high of 92,100 in June 2021 (a) how many of these vacancies are not filled after six months; and (b) how can the Ministry help Singaporeans fill these vacancies for firms as soon as possible.

Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what kinds of employment and training assistance are given to workers to cope with the structural changes in the economy such as the digital disruption; (b) how many workers have been given such employment assistance; and (c) which sectors do these workers predominantly work in.

Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Manpower (a) how many seniors aged 60 years and above are getting the Ministry's assistance to help them hold on to their jobs; (b) what are the forms of assistance rendered to these senior workers; (c) how many of them need to pivot to jobs in other industries; and (d) what are the main hurdles that they have to overcome.

Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Manpower as Singapore transits to an endemic COVID-19 economy, what are the plans to help our workforce as well as Singapore companies to shift their plans and strategies to meet the changes when the economy opens up gradually.

Mr Edward Chia Bing Hui asked the Minister for Manpower what is the Ministry’s assessment on the effectiveness of job placement and training support that are currently provided to assist unemployed and under-employed workers, especially those who are in distressed sectors and those who are facing headwinds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Manpower (a) whether the Ministry can provide an update on the progress of the various career conversion and job matching efforts for mid-career PMETs; (b) whether the schemes have achieved the intended outcomes; (c) what are the frictions; and (d) what are the other upcoming support and initiatives.

Dr Tan Yia Swam asked the Minister for Manpower whether the Ministry intends to introduce additional measures to support workers who have lost their jobs as a result of prevailing national guidelines especially for industries such as the food and beverage and the construction sectors.

Ms Yeo Wan Ling asked the Minister for Manpower (a) whether studies have been done by the Ministry to understand the digital preparedness of our workers aged 40 to 60 years; and (b) what are the support measures put in place to enable digitally-disadvantaged workers to take on job roles which have pivoted into the digital space.

On employment outcomes and support for workers, I hope to give a more holistic reply.

I thank all the Members for the concern for our jobseekers amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. On the whole, the labour market continued its gradual recovery in the first half of 2021. Although the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed persons reached a high of 1.63 in June 2021 – we have got very, very high job vacancies relative to unemployed persons – however, many of these openings were in the construction sector where the shortage has been due to public health border measures. There were also pockets of recovery in other sectors. Hence, resident employment grew and unemployment continued to ease.

However, the labour market has clearly not fully recovered. Therefore, we must remain vigilant, maintain our support measures for affected workers and we will continue to leave no stone unturned in helping all locals who need our support.

In particular, the $2.2 billion SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package has helped to cushion the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market since its launch in April last year. Thanks to the effort of our tripartite partners and the National Jobs Council, around 128,000 local jobseekers have been placed into jobs and skills opportunities as at end-July 2021.

The supported jobseekers reflect the profile of our workforce. Close to six in 10 placements into jobs and skills opportunities went to mid-career PMETs. Workforce Singapore (WSG) saw a large increase in placements through Career Conversion Programmes (CCPs) with more than 14,000 locals supported. WSG and NTUC's Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) expanded their service touch points, with 24 new SGUnited Jobs and Skills Centres established islandwide, in every HDB town.

We have also appointed Adecco as the first SGUnited Placement Partner, to offer another avenue for mature workers aged 40 and above, long-term unemployed jobseekers, or persons with disabilities, to access professional career matching services. Close to 44,000 jobseekers found jobs through these career matching services.

Members have asked about specific worker segments. Let me address these questions.

Dr Tan Yia Swam, Mr Edward Chia and Mr Sharael Taha were concerned about workers being displaced from distressed sectors. We are supporting such workers through a variety of ways.

The first and most important priority is to save jobs. The Jobs Support Scheme has disbursed more than $27.6 billion as of September 2021, with most support going towards the hardest-hit sectors. This is helping companies preserve their workforce's skills and competencies. We are continually recalibrating our support based on each sector's specific needs and recovery trajectory.

The most-affected sectors such as F&B services, retail and hotels have rolled out Job Redesign Reskilling programmes with WSG's assistance. They are using the downtime to train and to upskill existing workers to take on redesigned and enhanced job roles as part of their industry transformation. We have reskilled and redeployed close to 9,000 workers through these programmes.

Second, we stand ready to support some of the workers who may have to leave their jobs.

The number of retrenchments rose to about 26,000 in 2020, although the incidence of retrenchment remained lower than past recessionary years. Retrenchment numbers have improved since the fourth quarter of 2020 and have decreased to 2,340 in the second quarter of 2021. This is comparable to levels seen in 2018 and 2019.

Notwithstanding Phase Two (Heightened Alert) earlier this year, affected sectors such as F&B services, retail trade and arts, entertainment and recreation did not see elevated retrenchments as more employers put workers on short work-week or temporary lay-offs instead.

We are closely monitoring post-retrenchment outcomes. Amongst all retrenched residents, the six-month re-entry rate was 64.4% in the second quarter of 2021. This is an improvement from 61.6% in 2020. This is also comparable to pre-COVID-19 re-entry rates in 2018 and 2019.

The tripartite Retrenchment Taskforce follows up with every notified retrenchment by proactively reaching out to the affected workers and offering them employment assistance. This includes providing information kits on career resources, briefings on available employment facilitation and one-on-one coaching by WSG and NTUC-e2i's career coaches.

Third, we encourage companies who need workers to create jobs. We provide the Jobs Growth Incentive (JGI) to support employers expand local hiring. From September 2020 to May 2021, we supported 58,000 businesses to hire more than 400,000 locals. Four in 10 were in growth sectors such as wholesale trade, professional services and information and communications, while one in five were in the recovering F&B services and retail sectors.

Encouragingly, half of the JGI-supported hires were not employed at the point of hire and six in 10 – I think this is in reference to the hon Member of Parliament Jessica Tan's earlier question – earned the same or higher pay compared to their last drawn.

I also recently announced the extension of the JGI to March 2022 to secure the labour market recovery and to support our local jobseekers.

JGI provides additional support when employers hire mature workers, persons with disabilities as well as ex-offenders. Each of such hires could attract up to $36,000 of JGI support. I strongly encourage and urge all of our companies looking to recruit to not delay their plans and bring forward their hires.

Mr Yip Hon Weng asked about support for senior workers to stay in their current jobs or to pivot to new jobs in other industries.

We should be encouraged by the resilience of our senior workers. Notwithstanding the recession, the employment rate of those aged 60 and above increased slightly from 38.5% in 2019 to 39% in 2020.

As mentioned in my response to Ms Yeo Wan Ling and Ms Jessica Tan just now, the Government has introduced the Senior Worker Support Package in 2020 with a budget of $1.5 billion to support employers in hiring and retaining senior workers over three years. I will not go over the details a second time. I think all of you would have gotten the handout earlier as well.

Mr Yip Hon Weng also asked about platform workers. Platform workers are a diverse group and we are very committed to supporting them in their plans. Many, in a feedback survey to us, tell us that they prefer such work because of the flexibility and the autonomy it affords. For them, we have recently established an Advisory Committee on Platform Workers. This committee will consult widely and examine, get feedback from the industry to see how they can be better supported.

For those looking to transit to regular employment, WSG and NTUC's e2i offer career matching services, including career coaching, employability workshops and job fairs.

For example, in 2021, NTUC's e2i conducted several career re-invention workshops in collaboration with the National Private Hire Vehicles Association and NTUC LearningHub to help platform drivers explore new career pathways.

In addition, digital services like the MyCareersFuture (MCF) portal can be accessed at all hours of the day. The whole range of SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package support is also available to them.

We know that it is challenging for platform workers to transit to regular employment but WSG will continue to put in its best effort to support them in their job search.

Ms Hany Soh, Mr Yip Hon Weng and Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked about how jobseekers are matched to job vacancies.

Mr Speaker, our labour market exists in a constant state of dynamic flux and creative tension. It would not be possible to match all job vacancies with jobseekers perfectly. We understand and we appreciate this and more so especially when we or our loved ones are looking for a job. It always helps to have as wide an option base as possible and to choose the best option that is available.

But if vacancies are accumulating and they are left unfilled, it also indicates that the labour market is having difficulty in accessing and finding the right talent to fill these vacancies, and businesses have to continue to run.

Our latest available data from 2020 show that about 27% of job vacancies were unfilled for six months or more. This is actually down slightly from the pre-COVID-19 situation.

In September, I set up the Jobs Taskforce to coordinate efforts across key Government agencies to enable more locals to take up in-demand jobs with good wages and prospects in key sectors of our economy such as financial services and info-communications and technology. The Jobs Taskforce will work with tripartite partners and employers to make and enable the labour market to function even better.

Some vacancies take longer to fill because the wage or working conditions may not be as attractive as other options available to jobseekers. If they remain persistently unfilled, businesses may have to redesign the job roles. They may even have to review their strategies.

WSG offers job redesign support under the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG-JR), which was launched in December 2020. Through PSG-JR, enterprises can receive support to work with pre-approved job redesign consultants to redesign their work processes, their tasks and their responsibilities. We welcome all enterprises to come on board to troubleshoot any difficulties they may face in hiring new workers and grow their businesses, especially in our Singapore Core.

Other vacancies may persist because the employer is hoping to get someone who is already fully trained and ready to jump straight into the job from day one. We are helping employers to go beyond the "plug-and-play" mindset and approach by supporting Career Conversion Programmes (CCPs).

Employers who have adopted this approach have found that people recruited through CCPs are a good fit. About nine in 10 of the people placed through CCPs remained employed after 24 months and about seven in 10 earned more than their last drawn salaries.

Finally, some vacancies persist because of a shortage of skills in the workforce and among jobseekers.

Our industries are digitalising rapidly and as pointed out by Mr Yip Hon Weng, Ms Yeo Wan Ling and Mr Edward Chia, digital competencies are very highly sought after.

Mr Yip Hon Weng has asked about the number of workers who have been given employment assistance to cope with digital disruption.

As digitalisation accelerates, it has affected jobs to varying degrees.

First, many jobs would require workers to acquire basic digital literacy skills such as learning how to use digital communication platforms to market a product.

Second, some jobs will require workers to learn how to implement digital technology such as robotic process automation to automate processes or to perform more complex analysis.

Third, there will be growing demand for deep technology skills, which will bring us into the next bound of digital transformation.

Many workers in the first category will make this transition seamlessly. However, some will need additional support. Hence, we work with unions, Trade Associations and Chambers (TACs), companies and education institutions to scaffold their learning.

Under the SME Digital Reboot programme, Ngee Ann Polytechnic and NTUC LearningHub will work with 500 SMEs to provide workers with training in areas such as digital marketing and digital communication. Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) also drives digital adoption among vulnerable segments under the SG Digital Office while the National Library Board runs a range of digital readiness programmes on digital work skills, competencies and emerging technologies.

Moving on to the second category, where we will see more workers becoming implementers of digital technology. This is already happening rapidly in sectors such as logistics and manufacturing, where digital technology is embedded in the physical world, or what we term as Industry 4.0.

To help workers and companies ride on the opportunities presented by Industry 4.0 to transform and digitalise, WSG has partnered with the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) to launch the Industry 4.0 Human Capital Initiative (IHCI) to encourage companies in these sectors to trial and adopt Industry 4.0 technologies early while developing their workforce's digital competencies to ensure that workers can grow alongside their companies.

Thus far, close to 90 companies have come on board the IHCI, with an additional 210 expected to do so by September 2022. So, we hope that by the third quarter, we will have 300 companies onboarding the IHCI.

Parallel to this effort, the unions and employers have also established more than 600 company training committees (CTCs) where they work closely together to drive business and workforce transformation, including in digital competencies.

The third category of jobs, where deep technology skills are required, is also where we see some of the highest demand across the economy. IMDA's TechSkills Accelerator (or TeSA) initiative serves to meet this demand, having placed and trained more than 10,000 locals in good tech jobs since 2016, with 2,500 placed last year in 2020. Locals placed through TeSA have taken on jobs, such as Systems Analysts or Data Scientists, across sectors including Information and Communications, Financial Services, Professional Services, Manufacturing and Wholesale Trade and Retail.

I know that business and workforce transformation can be daunting. That is why we have set aside close to $10 million to develop Jobs Transformation Maps (JTMs). The JTMs are detailed sectoral manpower studies that map out the impact of technology and digitalisation on individual jobs over the medium term. They serve as a useful compass for employers, in particular our SMEs, and workers to prepare themselves for future jobs and skills. We have already launched three JTMs: Human Resources, Logistics and Financial Services. Twelve more are in progress.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, the road ahead will continue to be uneven and bumpy. However, I am confident that with the Government and tripartite partners continuing to work closely and just as importantly, with your concerns, with your collective efforts, we will be able to help our businesses and workers to emerge stronger together.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Minister for his reply. I have two supplementary questions.

The first pertains to Question No 10. It is important that our workforce is equipped with the necessary skillsets to deal with the structural changes in our economy, post-COVID-19. How does the Ministry check whether these training and employment assistance are fit for purpose, ensuring that there are right workers equipped with the right skills in the right sectors? And what will be the KPIs for tracking outcomes for success?

My second supplementary question pertains to Question No 12. In terms of plans and strategies for our workforce and companies, can the Ministry share in greater details: (a) what is insufficient today and what must change; (b) what must our workforce and companies aspire to do; and (c) when these plans must be firmed up to prepare for the opening of our economy?

I thank Mr Yip for his questions. To his first question, as part of the Industry Transformation Map (ITM) planning, MOM and MOE work very closely with the different sector agencies to identify emerging and in-demand skills for jobs in the various sectors. This will then enable the training providers and the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to refine their course offerings to make them more relevant, to make them more targeted and more specific for the industry needs.

Doing so will help to ensure that our workers have the necessary skillsets to take on good jobs. In addition, under my other portfolio in MTI, through EDB, through ESG, we have got various market readiness grants. There is also the global innovation alliance network, with the global connect network that we work very closely with SBF, to try to see the needs, the industry trends in many of the developed countries all over the world and to see how we can continue to keep our local workforce abreast of changes to keep them ahead and to keep them competitively sharp. I hope that answers the Member's first question.

To the Member's second point about plans and strategies for our workforce and companies, indeed, this pandemic has accelerated disruption and transformation. It has highlighted very clearly the need for businesses to strengthen their resilience as well as to have to constantly think about the disruptive changes that will come and to diversify. This would not just apply to business transformation but also to the workforce transformation as well, to keep our workers adept, to keep them agile and nimble. So, emerging trends today that we can see, such as automation and digitalisation, have radically transformed and changed the way we work, with remote work becoming more prevalent across many workplaces.

To retain our competitive advantage, to find good sustainable jobs for Singaporeans, our efforts to continue to transform and innovate our economy must continue so that we can strengthen, fortify our business environment and we can ensure that Singapore always remains the preferred hub, the preferred location for trade, for investment, particularly in new emerging growth areas, for instance, like additive manufacturing in Fintech. The anchoring of global companies which meet our desired profile and the aspirations of Singaporeans will help to preserve, spur the creation of good jobs, strengthen our Singapore Core.

I think that point that we debated so long yesterday adds to the fact that we must continue to reinforce trust, reinforce the credibility, our reputation that other economies have, the faith and trust, in us through the years and, hopefully, through the decades ahead.

We must also sustain efforts to help Singaporeans build skills which are relevant to the global talent marketplace. We have started the SkillsFuture movement. We have complemented it with a more nuanced, targeted Career Conversion Programme and these programmes have helped many Singaporeans take up new jobs in growth areas. At the same time, we are also looking to build up our CET pipeline ahead of demand in key growth areas in the green economy. Many of these initiatives come, they converge, we distill them and we develop a very targeted approach to help our fellow Singaporeans.

Many of my middle-aged residents have faced difficulties traversing the new digital normal. And many have admitted they are left behind in Singapore's drive to be digital. Many are unable to use with confidence online applications, even such as simple ones like Singpass online or even download an e-copy of their CPF, much less so becoming overnight digital marketeers or social media influences.

My residents have told me their frustrations after taking classes and courses, their employers have told them that those classes are irrelevant to the job roles that they are seeking.

Will the Ministry consider working with companies then on identifying key digital skills and the appropriate courses, perhaps across the many different skillsets, on the SkillsFuture platform, that will allow our less digitally inclined workers to be on a level playing field with digital natives in the hiring process and in future in job promotions?

Thank you, Ms Yeo. I think these are very pertinent points. For the training part, in terms of the elderly residents, we do have SG Digital Ambassadors to go around to teach them. And for those, even with the literacy skills, the National Library Board (NLB) also has a whole slew of programmes to help them transform as well.

But I think what the Member has hit on is a key issue which is really making sure that when companies and the workforce innovate, when they digitalise and so on, they must be relevant to the needs of the company. To that end, that is really a huge drive by WSG to develop these Career Conversion Programmes, because they are working with the company.

On top of that, NTUC has the CTCs, again working with the companies to understand the needs and to see how we can help to redesign, if the jobs need to be redesigned, or to help to train our local workforce, our Singaporean Core to be adept and to be able to fit into the expectations of the company.

Beyond that, I have shared earlier on that I have formed the Jobs Taskforce to understand where the gaps are, when there is an inability to clear that match. So, there are multiple initiatives at different levels to try to reach out to as many Singaporeans as possible.

Mr Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank MOM and all the officers for their hard work in retraining and reskilling our workforce during this very challenging time.

I have one supplementary question for the Minister. As there will always be laggard effect in reskilling, what is the Minister's assessment of the potential structural impact on the labour market, should job vacancies remain elevated?

I thank Mr Edward Chia for his question. I think we constantly worry about that. That is what keeps all of us in the Manpower Ministry and also, I believe – Minister Chan is here – MOE up on our toes all the time in working and identifying.

The key thing is that in the growth sector, in sustainability and the renewable energy sector, in fintech, in the ICT space, in the wholesale trade, in areas where there are growth, these are the areas that we target at. So, we prioritise, ensuring that the training, the upskilling and the reskilling of our Singaporean Core remains on track, so that we minimise the lag.

Contemporaneously, we also, through our global network of the innovation alliances and so on, see what lies ahead and how do we even prep our workforce to stay ahead of the curve all the time. This is something that we do.

For the rest who do experience that lag, in terms of the hiring, we do have a number of initiatives and programmes that we roll out to help them to catch up and also, to ensure that they are able to keep up in terms of the pivoting. If I were to go into the details of each one of the schemes, it probably will take us another session. But suffice to say that there are a whole slew of programmes available that today, we are already seeing quite a lot of traction.

If you look at the headline numbers, our long-term unemployment continues to remain one of the lowest and even for our resident unemployment today, the numbers are, even though they are not at zero, it will never be at zero, but I think they are at a level that is round about pre-COVID-19 time. [Please refer to “Clarification by Minister for Manpower”, Official Report, 5 October 2021, Vol 95, Issue No 40, Correction by Written Statement section.]

The next thing that we are exploring in terms of the Jobs Taskforce is to also investigate deeper to see how prevalent and widespread this displacement and under-employment that some Members think exists, would be. So, those are the things that we are looking into as well.

I understand from the Minister's response earlier that about 57% of the job vacancies have continued to be left unfilled after six months. [Please refer to "Clarification by Minister for Manpower", Official Report, 5 October 2021, Vol 95, Issue No 40, Clarification section.]

In this regard, I wish to find out whether options, such as the Career Trials or Place-and-Train programmes, had ever been explored by the employers with these job vacancies. If yes, whether there have been any findings on why such initiatives were unsuccessful in filling these job vacancies. If the answer is no, do we actually know the reasons behind why there is a reluctance from these companies in considering the adoptions of such job placement programmes?

I thank Ms Hany Soh for her question.

There will always be a certain level of job vacancies in a properly functioning labour market. Sometimes, the job vacancies could just be due to a skills mismatch where the jobseekers may not have the full set of requisite skills to be ready for the job. So, as I have shared, this is where the Career Conversion Programmes come in. Sometimes, we even go above that. We work with the companies to develop these Company Training Committees to ensure that the jobseekers have a proper market-clearing opportunity for them to be able to match up to the expectations of the employers.

Many of the employers who have actually worked with us to adopt this approach, have found out that the people whom they hire and even then the middle-aged workers, because of their experiential wisdom, the aptitude and attitude, they have actually found that after that conversion programme, that upskilling and reskilling, they found that they actually become pretty good fit.

For those who went through this, nine in 10 that was placed through this CCP remained employed in the same company after 24 months. [Please refer to "Clarification by Minister for Manpower", Official Report, 5 October 2021, Vol 95, Issue No 40, Clarification section.] And 70% of them, about seven in 10, actually earned more than their last drawn salaries. So, we can see that these programmes that we have put up, we are beginning to see quite good traction.

We need to let it run a bit more because you need to give it that runway before it tapers off or it plateaus off, then we can either reinforce or pivot to a new programme to build upon it. If you look at it, since April 2020, just the SGUnited Jobs and Skills package alone, WSG has placed 14,000 locals into this these CCPs.

There are still employers who would just prefer a "plug-and-play"; ostensibly, because some of them are in very high growth, and they keep getting new business coming in all the time, they have no time to think about training you and having that so-called comfort zone and that spare capacity of bandwidth to train. But we encourage these employers to fundamentally adopt some form of a mindset change as well.

For the people who are coming on to be trained, for them, that confidence in themselves, the adaptability is also fundamentally important, because it takes two hands to clap.

Through the Member's questions, it is obvious that she has thought through this very carefully. If I may borrow or leverage the Member's question, if I can leverage everyone here, it would be to reach out to all of the communities, the employers, the businesses and so on, to fundamentally change their mindset where they can be a lot more forgiving in their hiring. Different people have different skillsets that even though it may not necessarily fill that immediate job role, but if the company has that latitude, you will be able to find something for that Singaporean employee. I hope that addresses your question.