Old folks still not getting jobs in Singapore

Despite having re-employment policies and employees meeting the criterion, 15% of private establishments reported they had not offered re-employment to staff aged 62.

Ranking first among the reasons was the lack of suitable jobs (81%), followed by employees indicating that they did not want to continue working beyond the age of 62 (66%), according to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). The survey conducted by MOM also revealed the need for leadership renewal (18%) was not a major consideration while other reasons given were related to employees' personal characteristics, namely poor work attitude (41%), inability to keep up with changes (31%) and poor working relationships with colleagues (17%).

Nearly two-thirds, however, or 64% of private establishments reported that they have implemented measures to allow their local employees to work beyond the statutory retirement age of 62 by allowing them to continue working on existing contracts or by offering re-employment.

The remaining 36% of private establishments polled said they had not implemented any measure for their local employees to work beyond the age of 62, with two thirds (68%) of these establishments indicating this was because none of their local employees had approached the said age. About one quarter (26%) had not thought about the issue, while one in eight (12%) did not see a need to do so 6.6% said they intend to devise a plan in the next one to three years to allow local employees to work beyond 62.

The survey was conducted on a sample of 3,200 private establishments employing over 800,000 employees.