Women and older worker labour participation soared in 2015

Flexible working arrangements led to better work-life integration.

Women and older residents continued to post increases in their labour force participation rate (LFPR), sustaining a trend that’s been observed over the past years, according to Ministry of Manpower’s latest report. The spike is largely attributable to the greater availability of flexible employment arrangements, which in turn contributed to improved work-life integration.

Female LFPR soared to 60.4% from 54.3% this year as more entered or stayed on in the labour market.

As LFPR spiked considerably for women but was relatively stable for men, the female labour force grew at a faster rate of 3.0% per annum from 2006 to 2015 than the 1.5% p.a. for males. Consequently, the share of females in the resident labour force rose to 46% in 2015 from 43% in 2006.

Overall, there were 1.22 million women out of the 2.23 million residents in the labour force in June 2015.

Meanwhile, continued tripartite efforts to enhance the employability of older workers was reflected by the sizeable surge of LFPR to 69.5% in 2015 from 2006’s 56.3% for workers aged 55 to 64, and to 42.2% from 25.3% for those aged 65 to 69.

Most of the increase of LFPR for older workers came in 2006 to 2012, with sustained albeit subdued gains from 2012 onwards.

Overall, LFPR rose for the fourth consecutive year to 68.3% in June 2015 with generally broad-based gains noted across sex and age groups.