Almost 13,000 workers laid off in 2014 on back of heightened restructuring

Mainly from the services and construction sectors.

Almost 13,000 workers were laid off in 2014 on back of on-going business restructuring in the construction and services sectors, data released by the Department of Statistics (SingStat) and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) showed today.

The Labour Market report for 2014 showed that a total of 12,930 workers were laid off last year, an increase of 11.9% from the 11,560 workers laid off in 2013.

The services sector is the main culprit, with 7,260 workers laid off compared to 5,430 in 2013, In the construction sector, the number of laid off workers rose to 1,690 from 1,120 in 2013.

"After taking into account the workforce size, the incidence of redundancy rose from 5.8 workers made redundant for every 1,000 employees to 6.3 workers in 2014," the report stated.