More than 31,000 Singaporeans signed up to Jobs Bank

Since the National Jobs Bank officially went live in July, more than 31,000 Singaporeans have signed up.

Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said in a written response to Parliamentary questions that more than 10,000 employers are actively posting job vacancies, which equates to around 65,000 jobs at the moment.

"It’s an encouraging start, and we hope more employers and Singaporean job seekers would use it over time," he said.

However, he was quick to point out the Jobs Bank and the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) were not set up "to guarantee local job seekers that they will always get the job."

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"There can be various reasons why an employer may not end up hiring the Singaporean candidate after considering applications fairly," Tan said.

"For example, in the IT sector, there could be jobs that require technical skills or domain knowledge of legacy programming languages, which IT firms use in supporting legacy IT systems of many companies that our local workforce may not possess in sufficient numbers.

"Likewise, Singaporean job seekers have their reasons for not accepting job offers – for example – if employers are unable to meet their expectations in terms of job scope and other personal considerations."

He added Singaporeans may also land roles through means other than the Jobs Bank, such as on a company's in-house career site.

Therefore, data from the Jobs Bank is not "a representative or accurate indicator of how well Singaporeans are doing in the labour market in general".

"Rather, what is important to us is whether the overall labour market ecosystem benefits Singaporean job seekers," Tan said.

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