SINGAPORE, May 2 — The unemployment rate in Singapore remained low and trended down over the past four quarters as the labour market remained tight.

There were fewer layoffs across major industries, and lower unemployment for citizens and residents in the first quarter of 2015.

Employment continued to grow, although at a slower pace than the seasonal high at the end of last year.

These are the key preliminary findings from the “Employment Situation, First Quarter 2015” report released by the Manpower Research and Statistics Department, Ministry of Manpower (MOM) today.

It said preliminary estimates showed that the overall seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dipped from 1.9 per cent in December 2014 to 1.8 per cent in March 2015.

Similarly, the unemployment rate fell over the quarter for residents from 2.7 per cent to 2.5 per cent, and for citizens from 2.7 per cent to 2.6 per cent.

The MOM said employment in March 2015 grew by 2.9 per cent. This brought the total number of persons in employment to 3,624,200.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, overall employment growth in the first quarter of 2015 moderated from the seasonally high increase in the fourth quarter of 2014.

While employment growth has slowed, the MOM said the labour market remained tight and vacancies continued to outnumber jobseekers.

It said this was also evident from the low and continued downward trend of the unemployment rate and may be reflective of the anticipated slowing of the local labour supply going forward.

In terms of redundancy, the MOM said layoffs declined in the first quarter of 2015 after rising in the preceding quarter.

Some 3,500 workers were made redundant in the first quarter of 2015, fewer than in the preceding quarter (3,910), but slightly higher than the first quarter of 2014 (3,110).

More comprehensive labour market data will be released in the “Labour Market Report, First Quarter 2015” on June 15, 2015. — Bernama