Singapore MANPOWER AND LABOR
Serving up roti canai (Indian pancakes) near Arab Street
Courtesy Ong Tien Kwan
Singaporeans themselves were universally viewed as the
nation's
best natural resource. In 1989, however, the work force
was a
shrinking resource (see
table 6, Appendix). The high rate
of
economic growth combined with an increasing number of
Singaporeans
over the retirement age of fifty-five (nearly 12 percent)
and a
lower-than-replacement birth rate had resulted in a
significant
labor shortage. By the end of the century, the labor
market was
projected to be even tighter. According to the Ministry of
Health,
the fifteen to twenty-nine age-group would decline 25
percent, from
816,000 in 1985 to 619,000 in the year 2000.
In 1987 and 1988, slightly more than six Singaporeans
out of
ten were working or looking for work. Men's rate of
participation,
79 percent, remained steady. Women, however, responding to
job
opportunities in the manufacturing and commercial sectors,
were
increasingly entering the labor market (48 percent in
1988, up from
47 percent in 1987, 40 percent in 1978, and 24.6 percent
in 1970).
Job-switching was rampant, particularly in manufacturing,
where a
1988 survey showed that three out of four new workers quit
within
the month they were hired. Higher wage and input costs, as
well as
job-switching, resulted in a decline in the growth of
manufacturing
productivity (2.4 percent in 1988 compared with 3.7
percent in 1987
and 13.6 in 1986). The labor market, then, was at the
center of
challenges facing the Singaporean economy. The nature of
the
concern about the labor market had been almost totally
reversed
since independence. The early 1960s were a time of labor
unrest,
and unemployment was still about 10 percent by 1965. By
the late
1960s, however, there was substantial industrial peace,
which had
continued through the 1970s and 1980s. With unemployment
at a very
manageable 3.3 percent in 1988, the government's attention
was
focused on other aspects of the labor market.
Data as of December 1989
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