Singapore Job Market isn't going Anywhere

There’s a chill running through Singapore’s offices, and it has nothing to do with the air-conditioning. It is the quiet, creeping dread of a job market that is slowly seizing up, and the government's official numbers have just put a cold, hard stamp on that anxiety. Retrenchments have climbed to 3,670, job openings have dwindled to 69,200, and the entire system appears to be entering a deep freeze. This isn't just another economic report; it is the statistical confirmation of a "Great Consolidation," a new era of corporate caution that will define the labour landscape of 2026.

The Paradoxical Pain of the Growth Sectors

The most revealing and unsettling aspect of this downturn is where the pain is being felt. The axe is not falling on struggling, sunset industries. Instead, it is swinging through the gleaming towers of finance, professional services, and tech—the very sectors Singapore has designated as its engines of future growth. This is a critical distinction. It signals that the current wave of job cuts is not driven by a domestic recession, but by a deeper, global realignment. These outward-oriented sectors are the most exposed to international headwinds and the relentless disruption of technology. Companies are aggressively automating, consolidating regional roles into lower-cost hubs, and leveraging AI to boost productivity. The human cost of this efficiency drive is real and local: a staggering 74.2% of those laid off in the last quarter were Singaporeans and Permanent Residents. This is not a story of an economy shrinking; it is the story of an economy getting leaner and more productive, a process that is inevitably painful for those whose roles are being optimized away.

The Great Standstill: Decoding Labour Immobility

Beneath the headline noise of layoffs lies a more dangerous silence. The entire job market is grinding to a halt. The Ministry of Manpower’s data shows that both the average monthly recruitment rate (1.8%) and the resignation rate (1.2%) are now trending below their 10-year historical averages of 2.1% and 1.6%, respectively. The vibrant dance of talent moving between companies—the very engine of wage growth and career progression—has slowed to a crawl. This is the hard data behind the "job hugging" phenomenon, a market gripped by a mutual fear.

Companies, facing an uncertain outlook, are managing their headcount through "natural attrition," simply choosing not to replace employees who leave. This caution is intensifying, with the percentage of firms actively planning for redundancies rising from 1.9% in June to 2.3% in September. Simultaneously, employees are looking at the barren landscape of job ads and deciding that the devil they know is better than the devil they don't. This creates a dangerous feedback loop, a great standstill where everyone is too scared to make a move, leading to widespread stagnation.

A Bifurcated Reality: A Tale of Two Labour Markets

This slowdown is not affecting everyone equally; it is cleaving the workforce into two distinct realities. For non-PMETs, particularly in the manufacturing sector, the pressure is manifesting as a shrinking paycheck. The number of employees placed on a short work-week or temporary layoff rose from 620 to 800 in a single quarter, with non-PMETs making up two-thirds of this group. This is a classic cost-cutting measure that allows companies to avoid layoffs but directly erodes the take-home pay of hourly-rated workers.

For white-collar PMETs, the story is one of a frustrating paradox. The cruel irony is that even as thousands are retrenched, the job vacancy to unemployed person ratio actually rose, from 1.35 to 1.49. This means that for every one person officially looking for a job, there are still nearly 1.5 openings available. But here’s the catch: those jobs are for a new breed of worker. The market is simultaneously seeing a surplus of job seekers with traditional skills and a desperate shortage of qualified candidates with expertise in AI, data science, and sustainability. This skills mismatch is creating a chasm between the jobs that exist and the people who need them.

Outlook: A Leaner, Harsher Landscape for 2026

The MOM's Q3 data serves as a rear-view mirror confirming the forward-looking predictions of a widespread hiring freeze. The caution captured in employer surveys, like the SNEF poll indicating 58% of firms will freeze headcount, is no longer a forecast; it is an active reality. The power in the labour market has decisively shifted from the employee to the employer, and this will have profound consequences for 2026. Wage growth, for the majority of the workforce, will likely stagnate as companies prioritize cost control. The days of leveraging job offers for a 15-20% salary bump are, for now, over.

The brutal reality of this new landscape is captured in a single, sobering statistic: a re-employment rate of just 55.4%. This translates to a near coin-flip chance of a retrenched worker being jobless after six months, the lowest rate in years. This will force a structural change in the nature of work itself, with companies increasingly relying on contract and gig arrangements to maintain flexibility, further eroding job security. The outlook for 2026 is one of a leaner, more productive, but ultimately harsher and more competitive labour market—a period of intense consolidation where efficiency is king, and career progression will be a prize reserved for a select few with the precise skills the new economy demands.