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Singapore Employers Boost Payrolls as Record Economic Growth Spurs Hiring
Singapore employers expanded payrolls for a fourth consecutive quarter as record economic growth prompted companies in the services and construction industries to boost hiring.
The city state added an estimated 26,500 jobs in the three months ended June, after the creation of 36,500 positions in the first quarter of 2010, the Ministry of Manpower said in a statement today. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 2.3 percent from the previous quarter’s 2.2 percent as more jobseekers entered the labor market.
Singapore’s economy is in contention to be the world’s fastest-expanding in 2010 as rising demand for goods and services prompted the government to raise growth forecasts three times this year. The expansion is expected to stoke wage increases that Credit Suisse Group AG said may reduce margins at labor-intensive companies such as Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd. and SMRT Corp.
“Employment continued to grow in the second quarter of 2010 as the economy expanded strongly,” the Ministry of Manpower said today. “Unemployment has broadly stabilized, after declining sharply at the end of last year.”
The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of nine economists was for a jobless rate of 2.1 percent.
The services industry added 27,400 jobs last quarter while construction companies increased hiring by 1,800, the report showed, citing preliminary data. The manufacturing industry cut 2,400 jobs.
Singapore’s economy will overheat if the country doesn’t let in more foreign workers to counter a “tight” labor market, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was cited as saying by the Business Times on July 15.
The government expects the Southeast Asian island’s economy to expand 13 percent to 15 percent in 2010. Growth accelerated to 18.1 percent in the first half, the fastest pace since records began in 1975.
To contact the reporter on this story: Shamim Adam in Singapore at sadam2@bloomberg.net
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