Job creation slumps 21.5% to 24,900

But at least jobless rate surprisingly fell.

According to OCBC, Singapore's unemployment rate unexpectedly fell from 2% in Q2 to 1.9% in Q3 (lowest since 1Q11), even as growth slowed.

Here's more from OCBC:

The resident and Singaporean unemployment rates were unchanged at 2.8% and 3.0% respectively in Q3 2012. The decline in the unemployment rate despite higher layoffs likely reflected the ongoing economic restructuring with tightening foreign manpower curbs.

The number of jobs created in Q3 was 24.9k, which was 21.5% lower than Q2’s +31.7k jobs, and mainly contributed by services industries +11.3k (lowest since 2Q09), followed by construction with +9.8k (highest since 4Q08), and manufacturing +3.7k (3rd consecutive quarter of net job gains).

For the first three quarters of 2012, net jobs created were 83.8k, which is only 1.4% short of the 85k seen in the same period last year. However, Q2 likely marked the peak in job creation this year. The days of 20-30k addition each quarter to the services industries, which were likely attributable to the IR-related projects, have subsided.

In contrast, the construction sector appears to be approaching 10k per quarter and may be able to sustain this pace given the many infrastructure projects, especially for transport, schools etc, planned in the next few years.

Redundancies rose to 3.3k, the highest seen since 2Q09, driven by higher layoffs in electronics manufacturing and retail. Services contributed 1.8k layoffs (highest since 2Q09), followed by manufacturing at 1.3k (highest since 4Q11), with the remaining 200 from construction.

With lingering weakness in electronics manufacturing, total manufacturing employment is likely to remain somewhat soft. Services industries, which will face pressure to revamp and improve productivity growth, may continue to see the labour churn, especially in the retail sector.