Singapore’s talent mismatch has fallen over the past four years from 44% in January 2015 to 36% in May 2019, a sign that the local market has adjusted to the evolving jobs landscape, according to job site Indeed.
Results from Indeed show that Singapore’s labour market is comparable to the United Kingdom’s mismatch rate but are much lower than Australia and a little higher than the United States and Canada.
However, despite the improvement in jobs mismatch in both the technology sector and in the broader labour market, Indeed’s data reveals talent shortages do exist.
Particularly for technology and sales roles such as software engineering, sales executives and business development, where there are fewer skilled candidates to satisfy employer demand.
Singapore’s tight labour market with an unemployment rate of just 2.2%, means the misalignment is less of a problem than it is in some economies, according to Indeed.
Also, occupations with lower educational requirements such as customer service, driver and teachers have fewer available employment opportunities and an oversupply of candidates to job postings.
“Today around 36% of job seekers would need different job titles on their resumes in order to have the same distribution as job postings,” said Indeed economist Callam Pickering.
“Indeed data reveal a dynamic Singaporean jobs market. The island nation is positioning itself as a technology hub, which is readily observable in our data,” Pickering said.
