Graduates' Baptism of Fire
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hope those affected would emerge stronger.
Graduates
Baptism of fire
A bad, choppy ride ahead for Singapore’s better-educated, who rarely lived through a real economic crisis.By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
Mar 21, 2009
YOU’RE hired ... sorry, I mean fired – headlined a recent story concerning Singapore’s worst job slump for graduates.
It described the plight of a final-year economics student who lost her job in an American bank that was offered to her last November before she graduated.
She was one of at least three others from the National University of Singapore who were similarly “retrenched” by troubled firms – even before they had done a single day of work.
She had planned to spend her first pay cheque on a holiday to Europe. Instead a letter arrived revoking her job.
For this island state, the rapid disappearance of jobs has become the biggest single problem, next to the economic crisis itself. It affects all, from the highly educated to the uneducated.
But the biggest impact is felt by graduates, who make up more than half the number of the new jobless – and concerns are increasing.
In a survey of 100 graduating students who completed degree courses this year, more than half said they were afraid of heading into the real world, a newspaper reproved.
Their concern has been proven to be sound.
The government has just announced that the number of unemployed graduates more than doubled last year to 14,800 in December from 6,200 a year earlier.
(For comparison, the local universities are graduating some 17,000 youths this year, with an estimated 8,000-10,000 more from foreign institutions.)
Degree and diploma holders form the biggest number of dismissed workers in Singapore. In the last quarter of 2008, half the retrenched were professionals, managers, executives and technicians.
New graduates are the worst affected. “They are all fighting for the same jobs and fresh grads are at a disadvantage compared with those with experience,” said bank economist Irvin Seah.
Adding to the tight market is the return of thousands who have finished studies abroad.
One of the 4,000 who came back from America said he might seek a job here because many US firms are shying away from hiring foreign nationals.
Singapore is in this straits because for more than a decade, it had joined others like China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, to significantly increase the number of graduates to meet a higher-skill economy.
Today, about 20% of the annual school cohort ends up with a degree, 40% a diploma and much of the rest with some form of technical certificate.
This higher education has helped to create the current middle-class Singapore, the richest country in Southeast Asia, with 90% of the citizens owning homes.
In better times, a married couple with general degrees and three years working experience could earn a combined S$7,000-S$8,000 a month.
But as recession set in last year, thousands have become unemployed and many others are working with reduced wages – working shorter weeks or taking pay or bonus cuts.
It is a national dilemma.
Unless graduate unemployment is reversed, the middle class here faces erosion and social problems and poverty could set in.
Out-of-work graduates are unable to service their home payments or maintain their family. More couples may decide not to have children.
When he was Prime Minister during the early days of university-building, Lee Kuan Yew had said that Singapore would avoid countries like India, in producing too many jobless graduates.
With an able mind and higher expectations, too many of them would sit idly around coffee shops hatching revolutions, he explained.
For the first time, the government has announced a scheme to offer subsidies to recession-hit banks and financial firms which take on new graduates – probably as an intern programme.
Those firms would be given subsidies for the recruits’ allowances for up to a year, if they take in a minimum – possibly 10 – of new graduates. If the recession worsens, the scheme could be extended to other major corporations, one executive said.
“It will help companies to build up their talent pool and better position themselves when the economy picks up in the long run,” said a bank official.
Job risks remain very high as the economy heads for a forecast 5% fall in 2009, particularly in hardest-hit finance, manufacturing, airlines, shipping and retailing.
In the face of all these, Singaporeans have become more pessimistic than resource-rich Southeast Asian countries about how long they can survive without a job.
A survey by insurance group, AIA says only 19% think they could go more than two years without their main source of income, compared with 27% last year.
Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang has assured Parliament that more than 30,000 jobs would be created this year, enough to absorb the pool of fresh graduates and new job seekers.
Most retrenched are resilient, fitting into a lower job – but not without problems. A graduate who applied to be a bus conductor was rejected because he was over-qualified.
Another trouble is competition from foreigners who have a higher qualification and a lower pay expectation.
A Singapore engineer (diploma) was recently retrenched from a S$2,600 (RM6,300)-a-month technical sales job, which was taken over by a Myanmar post-graduate who accepted a pay of S$1,500.
The graduates crisis is not only reducing Singapore’s middle class, but also the population itself.
The next two years may force the exit of 200,000 unemployed foreign workers (and 100,000 locals), says Credit Suisse. This could mean the total population will fall by 3.3% to 4.68m by 2010.
Given the deepening economic crisis “maybe a smaller Singapore will be better,” commented a letter to the press. -
Actually, in a sense, uni graduates are like a sandwiched class itself that is neither here nor there.
They can't get decent entry level jobs (for uni grads) because of the crisis and cheaper workers.
They can't get a low-skilled low paying job (as a temporary measure to tide over these tough times) because they are "over qualified".
Either way, they are screwed.
Haiz.
Times are bad.
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So it is true that LKY didn't want us to have tertiary education for fear that we would hatch revolutions.
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i am super human
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Originally posted by Worldlybusinessman:
i am super human
Fark, you'll just like us. If you were any more super, you won't waste time on trash like us.
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i am super human
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I am doing MBA now leh,
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Originally posted by charlize:
Actually, in a sense, uni graduates are like a sandwiched class itself that is neither here nor there.
They can't get decent entry level jobs (for uni grads) because of the crisis and cheaper workers.
They can't get a low-skilled low paying job (as a temporary measure to tide over these tough times) because they are "over qualified".
Either way, they are screwed.
Haiz.
Times are bad.
very observant of you. -
Originally posted by Worldlybusinessman:
I am doing MBA now leh,
Same as the above scenario I just painted.
You cannot get a decent job because of the crisis and cheaper workers.
You cannot get a low skilled low paying job because you are "over qualified".
And you are competing with fresh grads with basic degrees who now fall into the "cheaper worker" and "lesser qualified" category when compared to your MBA.
Either way, you are screwed.
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Originally posted by 4sg:
very observant of you.It is staring right at your face when you look at the despondent and demoralised faces of fresh school leavers sitting around fast food joints scanning the ST Recruit section every Saturday morning.
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Originally posted by charlize:
It is staring right at your face when you look at the despondent and demoralised faces of fresh school leavers sitting around fast food joints scanning the ST Recruit section every Saturday morning.
I was also thinking of doing a MBA, went to NUS and NTU programme talks. Guess what? 60K to 40K a programme.
Almost 80% attendant are foreigners. It seems that these foreigners are using these MBAs as entry to Singapore.
Not only that, it seems like NUS and NTU are hell bent on recruiting foreigners into their programmes. I walked away with the impression that if one is a foreigner, esp an angmo, NUS and NTU will lick you up. They espounded the benefit of cross culture learning without further explanation - a benefit to who? I wondered.
I talked to some graduants about their jobs. Their jobs have exotic designations and scopes. Work place that is highly cross culture. Job here in Singapore but responsibility and work load all over the world.
Not targerting anyone or referring to anyone. But a MBA seems to be useful if one wishes to work for MNCs. I am always sceptical of MNCs. Today they are here because of profit and market. Tomorrow, they can tell you goodbye because their profit and market centres have shifted elsewhere.
Yes, I beginning to see the look of despair in these young school leavers' eyes. Nothing pains me more than to see our youth - the hope of our future, bewildered, loss and confused. -
Originally posted by Worldlybusinessman:
I am doing MBA now leh,
lol.. uncle had that one long long ago.but nothing beats street smart, shrewdness with good biz sense. i knew some chaps who had less that primary schools education but built up their shipbuilding, kopitiam and rennovation biz
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Originally posted by lotus999:
hope those affected would emerge stronger.
Graduates
Baptism of fire
A bad, choppy ride ahead for Singapore’s better-educated, who rarely lived through a real economic crisis.By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
Mar 21, 2009
YOU’RE hired ... sorry, I mean fired – headlined a recent story concerning Singapore’s worst job slump for graduates.
It described the plight of a final-year economics student who lost her job in an American bank that was offered to her last November before she graduated.
She was one of at least three others from the National University of Singapore who were similarly “retrenched” by troubled firms – even before they had done a single day of work.
She had planned to spend her first pay cheque on a holiday to Europe. Instead a letter arrived revoking her job.
For this island state, the rapid disappearance of jobs has become the biggest single problem, next to the economic crisis itself. It affects all, from the highly educated to the uneducated.
But the biggest impact is felt by graduates, who make up more than half the number of the new jobless – and concerns are increasing.
In a survey of 100 graduating students who completed degree courses this year, more than half said they were afraid of heading into the real world, a newspaper reproved.
Their concern has been proven to be sound.
The government has just announced that the number of unemployed graduates more than doubled last year to 14,800 in December from 6,200 a year earlier.
(For comparison, the local universities are graduating some 17,000 youths this year, with an estimated 8,000-10,000 more from foreign institutions.)
Degree and diploma holders form the biggest number of dismissed workers in Singapore. In the last quarter of 2008, half the retrenched were professionals, managers, executives and technicians.
New graduates are the worst affected. “They are all fighting for the same jobs and fresh grads are at a disadvantage compared with those with experience,” said bank economist Irvin Seah.
Adding to the tight market is the return of thousands who have finished studies abroad.
One of the 4,000 who came back from America said he might seek a job here because many US firms are shying away from hiring foreign nationals.
Singapore is in this straits because for more than a decade, it had joined others like China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, to significantly increase the number of graduates to meet a higher-skill economy.
Today, about 20% of the annual school cohort ends up with a degree, 40% a diploma and much of the rest with some form of technical certificate.
This higher education has helped to create the current middle-class Singapore, the richest country in Southeast Asia, with 90% of the citizens owning homes.
In better times, a married couple with general degrees and three years working experience could earn a combined S$7,000-S$8,000 a month.
But as recession set in last year, thousands have become unemployed and many others are working with reduced wages – working shorter weeks or taking pay or bonus cuts.
It is a national dilemma.
Unless graduate unemployment is reversed, the middle class here faces erosion and social problems and poverty could set in.
Out-of-work graduates are unable to service their home payments or maintain their family. More couples may decide not to have children.
When he was Prime Minister during the early days of university-building, Lee Kuan Yew had said that Singapore would avoid countries like India, in producing too many jobless graduates.
With an able mind and higher expectations, too many of them would sit idly around coffee shops hatching revolutions, he explained.
For the first time, the government has announced a scheme to offer subsidies to recession-hit banks and financial firms which take on new graduates – probably as an intern programme.
Those firms would be given subsidies for the recruits’ allowances for up to a year, if they take in a minimum – possibly 10 – of new graduates. If the recession worsens, the scheme could be extended to other major corporations, one executive said.
“It will help companies to build up their talent pool and better position themselves when the economy picks up in the long run,” said a bank official.
Job risks remain very high as the economy heads for a forecast 5% fall in 2009, particularly in hardest-hit finance, manufacturing, airlines, shipping and retailing.
In the face of all these, Singaporeans have become more pessimistic than resource-rich Southeast Asian countries about how long they can survive without a job.
A survey by insurance group, AIA says only 19% think they could go more than two years without their main source of income, compared with 27% last year.
Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang has assured Parliament that more than 30,000 jobs would be created this year, enough to absorb the pool of fresh graduates and new job seekers.
Most retrenched are resilient, fitting into a lower job – but not without problems. A graduate who applied to be a bus conductor was rejected because he was over-qualified.
Another trouble is competition from foreigners who have a higher qualification and a lower pay expectation.
A Singapore engineer (diploma) was recently retrenched from a S$2,600 (RM6,300)-a-month technical sales job, which was taken over by a Myanmar post-graduate who accepted a pay of S$1,500.
The graduates crisis is not only reducing Singapore’s middle class, but also the population itself.
The next two years may force the exit of 200,000 unemployed foreign workers (and 100,000 locals), says Credit Suisse. This could mean the total population will fall by 3.3% to 4.68m by 2010.
Given the deepening economic crisis “maybe a smaller Singapore will be better,” commented a letter to the press.at least these young chaps HAVE A DEGREE!
whatabout uncles like us that had no way of getting a proper degrees? who will pity us?
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Originally posted by 4sg:
I was also thinking of doing a MBA, went to NUS and NTU programme talks. Guess what? 60K to 40K a programme.
Almost 80% attendant are foreigners. It seems that these foreigners are using these MBAs as entry to Singapore.
Not only that, it seems like NUS and NTU are hell bent on recruiting foreigners into their programmes. I walked away with the impression that if one is a foreigner, esp an angmo, NUS and NTU will lick you up. They espounded the benefit of cross culture learning without further explanation - a benefit to who? I wondered.
I talked to some graduants about their jobs. Their jobs have exotic designations and scopes. Work place that is highly cross culture. Job here in Singapore but responsibility and work load all over the world.
Not targerting anyone or referring to anyone. But a MBA seems to be useful if one wishes to work for MNCs. I am always sceptical of MNCs. Today they are here because of profit and market. Tomorrow, they can tell you goodbye because their profit and market centres have shifted elsewhere.
Yes, I beginning to see the look of despair in these young school leavers' eyes. Nothing pains me more than to see our youth - the hope of our future, bewildered, loss and confused.For the students, MBA programs are more for networking purposes.
For the instituitions, they are a source of money.
As far as I know, the topics for MBA programs are not hard.
Never heard anybody flunk out of an MBA course before. (Let me know if you have heard of any
)As long as you put in some study time and effort, you will likely get your MBA.
You had better, considering you just blew 40-60K on it.
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Originally posted by charlize:
For the students, MBA programs are more for networking purposes.
For the instituitions, they are a source of money.
As far as I know, the topics for MBA programs are not hard.
Never heard anybody flunk out of an MBA course before. (Let me know if you have heard of any
)As long as you put in some study time and effort, you will likely get your MBA.
You had better, considering you just blew 40-60K on it.
Mi will not blow my money on it. Heard too much stories liao, better to blow it down angie's pub......
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Originally posted by 4sg:
Mi will not blow my money on it. Heard too much stories liao, better to blow it down angie's pub......
Treat it as an investment.
Having an MBA title behind your name will definitely open doors for you.
To be honest, just having a basic degree is nothing to shout at these days.
Give it another 5 to 10 years, Master's grads will be the norm not the exception.
Really.
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Originally posted by 4sg:
Mi will not blow my money on it. Heard too much stories liao, better to blow it down angie's pub......
Woo hoo ... you mean ladies working there too ... -
Originally posted by charlize:
Treat it as an investment.
Having an MBA title behind your name will definitely open doors for you.
To be honest, just having a basic degree is nothing to shout at these days.
Give it another 5 to 10 years, Master's grads will be the norm not the exception.
Really.
thanks chalize....as always u spoke with insight n wisedom.......
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Originally posted by Ice Dive:
Woo hoo ... you mean ladies working there too ...
u ask the wrong person....tomolo ask my meimei angie..... -
Originally posted by 4sg:
thanks chalize....as always u spoke with insight n wisedom.......
I speak with insight and wisdom?
Did you just lick some mushrooms?
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Originally posted by charlize:
I speak with insight and wisdom?
Did you just lick some mushrooms?
u want mi to say satirical n sarcasm? -
Originally posted by 4sg:
u want mi to say satirical n sarcasm?Mushroom effects are wearing off.
Try the toad next time.
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so it's satirical n sarsasm
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So any new fresh grads in here?
Come and share job search experience, thoughts, bitch about salary/boss etc.
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sigh, times are bad