Chart of the Day: Fallout in domestic labour market hit 25,600 in Q1

This marked the biggest quarterly contraction on record.

This chart from OCBC Bank shows that the ongoing fallout in the domestic labour market already started in Q1 with a 25,600 drop, excluding foreign domestic workers. This is larger compared to the earlier estimate of a 19,900 decline in total employment.

This marked the biggest quarterly contraction on record and exceeded the drop of 24,000 seen during the SARS period in 2003.

OCBC Bank notes that the worst is probably yet to come as Q1 data may not have incorporated the acceleration in the COVID-19 cases, which subsequently led to the circuit breaker being imposed.

Nevertheless, the significant decline was in foreign employment whereas local employment contracted slightly. That said, as a proportion of the total workforce, the decline in employment stood at 0.7% in Q1, which is less severe than the 1.2% fall seen during the SARS outbreak.