Crunch time: Job vacancies in Singapore now more than 60,500

Vacancy-unemployed ratio highest in 7 years.

A tight labour market is the least of worries, as it implies that unemployment rate is low and companies are raising labour costs to catch the best of the bunch. Singapore’s unemployment rate remains at 2.0%, which essentially implies that the economy is already at full employment.

A report by DBS reveals that job vacancies rose 18.4% from the same period last year, and the ratio of job vacancy to unemployed person ratio has also spiked up 1.33 in the first quarter, the highest since 2007.

Here’s more from DBS:

However, we expect the unemployment rate to inch up a notch or two later in the year. Growth is slowing and the labour market typically lags behind by about 1-2 quarters. Second quarter GDP growth is expected to report a contraction of 0.8% QoQ saar based on the official advance estimates. A weaker than expected recovery in the global economy, a structural decline in the electronics cluster and a general deterioration in Singapore’s external competitiveness will affect the labour market at some point in time.