Employment Trends of Fresh Polytechnic and ITE Graduates

Mr Speaker, every year, the Ministry of Education (MOE) surveys the employment rates of polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) graduates six months after they complete their final examinations. The employment rate has remained high over the past 10 years. Each year, subject to some fluctuations due to the performance of the economy and job market, around nine in 10 graduates found jobs.

Having said that, there have been some significant shifts in the choices of graduates. Over the last 10 years, the percentage of polytechnic and ITE graduates who chose to go into further studies, instead of working, has gone up by over 10 percentage points.

This is driven by various efforts of the Government to expand education pathways for students. There are more places at polytechnics for ITE students, and more places at universities for polytechnic students.

As for those who choose to enter the labour force, there has also been a shift. Full-time permanent work has come down, while freelance, part-time and temporary work have gone up. To illustrate this, the percentage of polytechnic and ITE graduates who reported that they were in full-time permanent employment fell from 77% in 2007 to 58% in 2016, a 19-percentage point change.

About half of the decrease is due to students choosing to do part-time work while they prepare for further studies. A similar proportion chose not to do full-time permanent work voluntarily. They could be doing freelance work or have other reasons to lead them to choose to work part-time or take up temporary employment. The small remainder – about one percentage point – represents an increase in those who are involuntarily doing part-time work or are still looking for employment.

The strong desire to further their studies, higher incidence of students choosing to do freelance work or start their own business and students taking longer to look for work, are possible explanations for these changes. MOE will be doing an in-depth study into these trends and understanding the underlying forces driving the decisions of students.

One supplementary question for the Senior Minister of State. Some economists have opined that technical jobs may be more at risk from trends, such as automation, robotics, artificial intelligence. Does the Ministry feel that the outlook for these jobs is more at risk going forward because of these developments as compared to other kinds of jobs, for example, graduate jobs?

Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for the question. Our preliminary analysis and the information that we have, suggest that the trends are reflective of the behaviour and aspirations of students as well as the opportunities that are being made available, rather than a specific push as a result of the factors described by the Member. But we will continue to study the matter to ensure that there are factors that we can address to benefit the students as best we can.

I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State, with the change in trend and having more students willing to continue and pursue further studies, would this actually impact the Earn and Learn Programmes that we are trying to encourage more of the Institutes of Higher Learning students to take up over time?

Mr Speaker, again, preliminary data suggests no, the Earn and Learn Programmes are doing quite well, with benefits being observed and appreciated by the students, the employers and also by the faculty supervising the process.

It is early days in terms of the shifts with respect to the behaviour I described in the first part of my answer, so we will continue to study it. But so far, the Earn and Learn Programme appears to be doing well.