IT and Advertising at the forefront of Singapore’s online hiring
Online hiring in Singapore is off to a positive start in 2019, with 5% and 3% year-on-year growth in January and February respectively, according to data from the latest Monster Employment Index (MEI).
Leading this growth from the forefront is the IT, Telecom, BPO/ITES industry, with 21% and 22% year-on-year demand growth for the first two months of 2019. Following this is the Advertising, Market Research, Public Relations, Media, Entertainment industry with 16% and 15% y-o-y growth respectively for January and February.
The BFSI and Education industries also saw strong positive numbers in the past couple of months, clocking in 12% and 7% growth respectively between February 2018 and 2019. On the flip side, the Healthcare industry witnessed the steepest drop of 2% for January and 3% for February, while Hospitality also failed to impress with no movement in January and a 2% decline in February.
When looking at occupations, Software/Hardware/Telecom professionals witnessed the highest spike in demand, clocking 9% and 8% y-o-y growth for January and February respectively. Marketing and Communications and Legal talent also witnessed a considerable rise in demand, respectively recording 8% and 6% year-on-year rise for February.
The demand for Real Estate and Healthcare professionals saw the steepest decline of 17% and 15% respectively, between February 2018 and 2019. “Singapore has positioned itself as Southeast Asia’s digital hub and as startups mushroom and multinationals flock for easy access into the region, the demand for high-skilled technology experts has been consistently rising all of last year and we see this upward trajectory continuing in 2019 as well,” said Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO of Monster.com – APAC and Middle East.
“The 2019 Budget highlights the Singapore government’s focus on helping local firms strengthen their digital capabilities and making efforts to re-skill the workforce in order to help the workforce maintain its competitiveness amidst a rapidly evolving technological landscape.” he added.