SINGAPORE, Oct 7 — Only 33,100 jobseekers have been placed into openings under the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package, out of the 117,500 available opportunities at the end of August.

The Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) eighth job situation report unveiled today by Manpower Minister Josephine Teo showed a significant number of remaining unfilled vacancies under the S$2 billion package announced in May.

The aim of the package was to create close to 100,000 opportunities for workers, including jobs, traineeships and skills training opportunities.

Even though the Government has surpassed this target, less than a third of the opportunities under the scheme have been taken up by jobseekers so far.

Based on ground feedback, MOM said that there continues to be mismatches in expectations and skills.

On the one hand, some jobseekers are hesitant about moving into unfamiliar roles. Employers, on the other, are still getting used to looking beyond candidates with backgrounds that are an exact match for jobs.

The ministry urged employers to focus on candidates’ transferrable skills and tap government funding to bridge the skills gaps.

Teo briefed the media on the report before she toured construction firm Samwoh Corporation’s laboratory facilities with Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat and Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing.

Speaking to reporters after the tour, Heng, who is also Finance Minister, was asked what the Government will do to speed up the process of getting these job vacancies filled.

He said that job centres, which are now in every Housing and Development Board (HDB) estate, will play an important role.

He said that he has also recently spoken to workers about their experience in finding a new job after being persistent in looking at various avenues including job advertisements and websites.

“So I think job matching is not straightforward,” Heng said.

“And then if we persist in the effort, I think jobseekers will be able to find something that they like and at the same time there are also a whole range of training programs,” he added.

“So where training is needed, I think we can enhance that and there’s a very good suite of programs to help our people build new skills.”

While he urged workers to make full use of these schemes, he said the Government will also look into how they can improve the matching, and how the database system that they have can be better utilised for that purpose.

Teo said the focus now “must be to try and get as many of those vacancies filled as possible”. “What that means is that we will have to have a very strong emphasis on job matching and to get the job matching to pick up momentum to an even larger extent than it has,” she added.

She reiterated that career matching services provided by Workforce Singapore and the Employment and Employability Institute are “readily available”. “There are five Careers Connect centres in Singapore and we’ve also set up 24 satellite career centres in heartlands to make it more easily accessible to job seekers,” she noted.

Here is a round-up of the opportunities available under the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package:

Top sectors with opportunities

Information and communications: 19,860 opportunities

Healthcare: 9,240

Professional services: 7,610

Finance and insurance: 6,200

Manufacturing: 6,070

Sectors with most jobseekers matched with opportunities

Information and communications: 2,650

Food Services: 1,680

Professional Services: 1,420

Healthcare: 1,180

Finance and insurance: 1,160

Opportunities under the scheme

At the end of August, there were 117,500 opportunities under the scheme. This is a near 30 per cent jump from the 92,000 opportunities available at the end of July.

About 71,400 Government-funded opportunities or public sector jobs:

Long-term jobs: 22,690

Short-terms jobs: 13,920

Company-hosted traineeships, attachments and training: 21,860

Training opportunities: 12,950

About 46,100 jobs offered by private sector employers:

Long-term jobs: 37,290

Short-term jobs: 8,830

Jobs offered by public and private sector employers:

Government-funded opportunities or public-sector jobs accounted for most of the growth, the report showed.

Yet, of the nearly 60,000 long-term jobs available, the private sector offered significantly more — 37,290 jobs, compared with 22,700 by the public sector. — TODAY