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SDS-Singapore

SINGAPORE
EMPLOYMENT TREND NEWSLETTER

11 Jan 2010

Vol.5 (En)

2009 proved to be a challenging year as the Global recession cut deep into most part of the world's economies. With the turn of a new year, the World looks upon 2010 as a year of healing, rebuilding and courageous aspirations...

SDS Newsletter

Singapore Aims To Cut Unemployment In 2010

Singapore's economy was not spared from the rod of the recent Global recession as the country's unemployment rate reached 3.4 per cent in Q3 of 2009. After a relentless effort by the government to save jobs and prevent mass retrenchments in year 2009, the nation's labour movement has set its sight on reducing unemployment to below 3 per cent in year 2010.

The labour movement would target three areas to help improve employment in 2010, including among PMETs (ie. professionals, managers, executives and technicians). Their focus would be to increase Singapore's re-employment rate, to reduce structural unemployment, and to encourage middle-aged PMETs to undergo re-skilling and re-training to boost their employment chances.

Japan Aims To Create 4.76m Jobs By 2020

Japan's unemployment rate was registered at 5.2% in November 2009 compared to 4% a year ago. The Japanese government unveiled an ambitious economic growth plan, pledging to create millions of new jobs and achieve average growth of 2 per cent over the next decade.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, said the government's new growth strategy would focus on harnessing Japan's strengths to create new markets valued at Y100,000bn in the environmental, healthcare and tourism sectors. By stimulating demand in these areas and improving the supply of goods and services to meet this new need, the government expects to create 4.76m jobs by 2020. Mr Hatoyama citing the government's mission to "Reshape the Nation", expressed confidence in the government's ability to achieve this target, saying: "We will complete [the growth programme] no matter what."

Details of the new plan, anticipated to be released by next June, which sets a target of 4 per cent GDP for combined public and private sector investment in research and development, includes steps for Tokyo to establish a free trade area in the Asia-Pacific region by 2020.