Singapore’s talent mismatch has fallen by 8% over the past four years from 44% in January 2015 to 36% in May 2019, according to Indeed. The results are indicative of Singapore’s strong economy in which both employers and job seekers have adjusted to the evolving jobs landscape.
A mismatch in the labor market indicates an imbalance between job seekers and job postings. Singapore’s results are comparable to the United Kingdom’s mismatch rate but are much lower than Australia and a little higher than the United States and Canada.
Despite the improvement in the jobs mismatch in both the technology sector and in the broader labor market, Indeed’s data reveals talent shortages do exist. Particularly for technology and sales roles such as software engineering, sales executives and business development, where there are fewer skilled candidates to satisfy employer demand. However, Singapore’s tight labor market with an unemployment rate of just 2.2%, means the misalignment is less of a problem than it is in some economies.
Meanwhile, occupations with lower educational requirements such as customer service, driver and teachers have fewer available employment opportunities and an oversupply of candidates to job postings.
Commenting on the data, Indeed economist, Callam Pickering said “Mismatch in Singapore, has gradually declined over the past four years. Today around 36% of job seekers would need different job titles on their resumes in order to have the same distribution as job postings. That’s down from around 44% of job seekers four years ago. Indeed data reveal a dynamic Singaporean jobs market. The island nation is positioning itself as a technology hub, which is readily observable in our data.”
