She focused on statistics that show how the less education a person gets, the more they tend to be underemployed. The WP chairwoman, therefore, urged the Government to carefully evaluate underemployment and its effects, including economic ones, on the country.
Ms Lim also brought up another study, one conducted in 2017 by Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute, which pegs the country’s underemployment rate at 4.3 percent. This is one percentage point above MOM’s figure, which was released in June 2018. She also said that employees’ situations should, therefore, be monitored especially due to this possibility of job disruption.
Citing the over 76,000 job seekers who found jobs through the Adapt and Grow Initiative from 2016 to 2018, she said it would be helpful to determine whether the employees who had to transition to jobs in other industries had the same salary as in their previous jobs, or ended up needing to take a cut in their pay.