Singapore graduate employment data not ‘the be-all and end-all’

Singapore has been urged to rethink how it measures graduate employment, amid concerns that outcomes are being measured too narrowly through metrics such as immediate full-time jobs.

Deputy vice-chancellor of James Cook University in Singapore, Carole-Anne Upton, said that data on first jobs, including the length of time it takes to land one, can be “a useful indicator of something of the transition from education into work”. But she cautioned it is “not the be-all and end-all”. 

“What we’re trying to do here is something broader than just get people into that first job,” she said.

Data from three graduate surveys published this year revealed that 74.4 per cent of graduates from public and autonomous universities in Singapore secured full-time employment last year. Meanwhile 66.2 per cent of post-national service graduates from polytechnics secured full-time employment.

However, fewer than half of fresh graduates (46.9 per cent) from private universities in Singapore secured full-time employment in 2024-25. This is a small 0.5 per cent rise from the previous year.

Starting salaries are also stable among fresh graduates. The median monthly salary for graduates from public universities in Singapore was recorded at S$4,500 (£2,607) last year.

Private university James Cook recorded the highest median gross monthly salary of S$3,700 out of private education providers.

Upton asserted that, “Anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen to graduate jobs or indeed any jobs in months, let alone years…I wouldn’t trust them because things are changing so quickly.”

To prepare graduates for global headwinds or potential economic shocks driven by AI, Upton said universities need to teach skills such as “resilience”, “adaptability” and “the capacity to change and learn quickly”.

“I would say [these skills] are even more important than the subject knowledge…You can be expert in your subject, but if you can’t survive the winds of change that are just everywhere, then there’s not much point really.

“We try to develop people’s human skills here very purposefully across all the programmes because that’s the thing that is actually going to make them successful in their lives.”

How universities can better prepare graduates for a changing world is what Upton called “the million-dollar question”.

Labour market data released by the Ministry of Manpower in Singapore last week revealed that total employment grew for a 19th consecutive quarter in the second quarter of this year.

Terence Ho, associate professor at the Singapore University of Social Science, said that the “general labour market is holding up quite well in Singapore by most of the metrics”.

He said the market is also relatively “healthy” for graduates because there has not been a decline in unemployment, despite it taking longer for fresh graduates to land their first job.

Ho, also an adjunct faculty member at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, identified the Graduate Industry Traineeship (GRIT) as a “lever” that the Singaporean government has successfully used “to try and keep the graduate unemployment down”. GRIT is government-funded initiative offering fresh graduates up to six-month-long traineeships.

“It’s meant to be scaled up if there’s really going to be a big drop in graduate employment,” said Ho. At the moment, the GRIT is “deployed on a very limited basis because the overall market has been quite healthy”.

While there has not been “a worsening or weakening” of labour market conditions, Ho said he has heard “some concerns” among graduates who are feeling “that they are underemployed or that they are not getting the kinds of jobs they expect”.

Recent employment data may be positive, but sometimes it “does not gel with what we hear on the ground”, Ho said.

rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation.com