Hiring prospects amongst manufacturers at their worst in a decade

The sector contributed to 21% of total retrenchments in Q3.

Bloomberg reports that Singapore’s manufacturing sector expects the weakest hiring performance in a decade amidst growth in retrenchments.

Retrenchments climbed to 2,900 in Q3, after easing in the previous three months, according to advanced quarterly data released last week. The biggest losses were in the services industries (66%), although manufacturing (21%) and construction (14%) also saw job cuts.

Amongst 669 hiring managers in Singapore, attitudes toward the employment outlook in the final three months of the year are at their most pessimistic since the third quarter of 2017, according to the most recent ManpowerGroup survey released in September.

The difference between those saying staff numbers will increase in the fourth quarter versus those predicting a decrease is a slim 5 percentage points, the data show.

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