Job Market 2020

01/10/2020

The Road Thus Far

During January of this year, we were quite weary that the Wu Han virus (now known as the Corona Virus or CoVid-19) would impact out economy as we are in such a connected world and having China as one of the super power closest to our shores in Singapore. We started seeing the virus started spreading throughout China and slowly throughout the world. As the months went on, the recruitment sphere seem impervious to the Corona Virus and recruitment was still high.

Sometime around April, when the Prime Minister of Singapore (Lee Hsien Loong) announced that Singapore will be going into a partial lockdown (AKA Circuit Breaker AKA CB) to contain the spread of CoVid-19, we have received emails from our clients that hiring for new headcount within their companies have frozen till further notice. We experienced a slight drop in our placements(20%). During the CB, our Recruitment Consultants were still actively recruiting for our clients and we still had candidates joining our clients’ offices between April and May.

What’s Happening Now

Post CB till today, the recruitment sphere is still a bit sluggish and hiring has slowed, During which, we have been speaking with many candidates and we experienced a sudden increase in candidates. Most were retrenched due to CoVid-19 and businesses has been hit hard and some have folded, wound up, cut workforce or employees put on unpaid leave.

But till September, we still experienced clients are still hiring. Mainly we see the rise of the Robotics Industry gaining momentum during this period(due the need to automate as much as possible to decrease human interaction to prevent transmission) but we still do see Robotics companies fold or experience financial hardship during the CB period. There are still pockets of Information Technology clients still hiring. The main take-away is yes the economy as a whole has tanked and it would take at least 3 years to have it back to it’s pre-CoVid days, but there are still pockets within specific industries still hiring and still going strong.