Statistics on Registered Unemployment.
Unemployment:
Unemployment:
The Employment Service Department, Ministry of Labour is responsible for data collection and statistical processing. The Ministry's Research and Statistics Department is responsible for publication of this series (and labour statistics in general).
The data from this series cover the whole country based on reports of the one Employment Service Department run by the Government to which all Singaporean citizens aged 14 years and above who are unemployed may address themselves for employment assistance.
The series is monthly and started in 1970.
Unemployment: The unemployed registrants are those who have no Central Provident Fund contribution in the month preceding the month in which they are registered for employment assistance. The count of unemployed is the number on the live register at the end of the month excluding those who already have jobs.
In so far as they conform to the definition above, also included in the series are persons (excluding students) seeking temporary or part-time work; first jobseekers and re-entrants to the workforce; employable disabled persons and those receiving invalidity benefits; retirement and other pensioners; persons on temporary or indefinite lay-off without pay; and persons responsible for the loss of their last job.
Students seeking temporary employment during vacations and persons with some minimal employment seeking other work fall outside the definition and are thus not included. Persons on strike (who are considered to still be employees) are excluded.
Registration: Means any Singaporean who is voluntarily registered at the Employment Service Department for the sole purpose of employment assistance. The registration period is valid for six months. At the end of the sixth month, renewal of registration is required for continued employment assistance, failing which de-registration occurs. There is no restriction however as to how frequently re-registration may be carried out.
Deletion from the register: Registrants are deleted from the register for refusal to fulfil the maintenance requirements. Persons are automatically excluded from the unemployment statistics once they are deleted from the register.
Temporary inability to work due to illness; rejection of job offers and fraud do not lead to deletion from the register.
The end of the month. The data are generally compiled within 14 days after the end of the month.
The Employment Service Department makes monthly checks on the employment status of the new registrants in the month, and quarterly checks on all existing registrants. Persons who have been placed in employment through the Department or who have found their own job, as confirmed by the employment records of the Central Provident Fund Board which are communicated to the Department, are excluded from the unemployment register monthly, as well as those who no longer require employment assistance during the validity of their registration period and those who do not renew their registration. No statistical evaluations are performed on the data.
Unemployment rates are not computed for this series.
Prior to the year 1978 the definition of this series included all registered applicants for work, including persons already in employment seeking other employment.
Ministry of Labour, Research and Statistics Department: "Monthly Digest of Statistics" (Singapore, 1988). Each issue contains data from the preceding month.
idem: "Singapore Yearbook of Labour Statistics" (Singapore, 1987). Each issue refers to the same year's data.