SINGAPORE, Feb 21 — By the end of 2021, six months before graduating from the National University of Singapore, Mr Ho Jia Hau had already sent out 10 job applications without securing any offer.

This compounded his initial worries over his employment prospects because he had heard that his seniors had difficulties getting hired during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Ho, who studied mechanical engineering in university, said it did not help that “we were also not sure when Covid-19 conditions will stabilise or go away and... when the economy will return to better conditions.”

However, his outlook improved in 2022, and after applying for dozens more jobs, the 25-year-old received three job offers.

He ended up picking one in the maritime sector that offered the highest pay, with a package that was “25 per cent more” than his own expectations, which he based on previous years’ median pay figures.

Similar to Mr Ho, Miss Amanda Teo, a finance graduate from the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), had “a bleak outlook” in terms of her starting pay.

“When it was given to me, it was quite out of my expectation,” Miss Teo, 24, said of her job offer as a project execution analyst in the Asia-Pacific technology management office of financial services firm JP Morgan.

Her starting pay was about the same or slightly above-average compared to her peers in the industry, she added.

Though both Mr Ho and Miss Teo declined to reveal their starting salaries, they were among the fresh university graduates of 2022 who entered what was a better job market than the year before.

They were speaking to TODAY after the release of the 2022 joint graduates employment survey on Monday (Feb 20).

The survey found that despite a slight drop in the overall proportion of graduates who were employed within six months after their final examinations, the proportion of fresh graduates who landed full-time jobs rose along with median salaries — figures that human resource expert Adrian Choo described as “more important” indicators of the job situation for them.

Initial ‘fear’

Looking back, Miss Teo acknowledged that she had apprehensions about the job market in 2020 when Covid-19 hit.

That year’s survey showed that slightly less than seven in 10 graduates held full-time jobs within six months of completing their final examinations. And 11.3 per cent were involuntarily in part-time or temporary employment.

Though things picked up in 2021, Miss Teo did not rest on her laurels and applied for a one-year apprenticeship at JP Morgan while juggling her final-year classes at night.

“It was 100 per cent to improve my prospects of getting a job,” she said.

Her efforts paid off when she managed to secure a full-time role with the company before she completed her apprenticeship.

Mr Ho recalled his own concerns, worrying about having to work on a part-time basis should he fail to secure a full-time job.

“Definitely, there’s that fear of whether you have to settle for a part-time job, because of the economic uncertainty.”

He said that he felt more assured after he started receiving replies from companies.

Only 0.8 per cent of those polled from his cohort were involuntarily in part-time or temporary employment within six months after their final exams. This was down from 3.0 per cent for the 2021 cohort.

Healthier signs

One key finding of the 2022 graduate survey was that median gross monthly salary among fresh graduates in full-time permanent employment rose to S$4,200, from S$3,800 in 2021.

Mr Choo the human resource expert who is a career coach and founder of Career Agility International, also pointed to bright spots such as the proportion of graduates holding full-time jobs going up from 84 per cent to 87.5 per cent.

“This is a healthy indicator that graduates are finding real jobs rather than doing part-time employment.”

He said that full-time employment figures were “more important” because these jobs offer better training and mentoring than freelance jobs.

The proportion of those in involuntary part-time employment has also been dropping, he noted, saying that the numbers have been “soaked up by full-time employment”.

Although some graduates may prefer a freelance working arrangement, or to become self-employed entrepreneurs, the declining number of part-time and freelance workers was more likely due to companies hiring more permanent workers as the economy continued to recover in 2022, rather than a reflection of graduates’ preferences, he added.

As for the slight drop in the number of graduates who were hired within six months of completing their final examinations from 94.4 per cent in 2021 to 93.8 per cent last year, another human resource expert Adrian Tan said that one factor could be a ”spillover effect” from some high-profile layoffs last year, particularly those in the technology sector.

This may lead to some companies imposing a hiring freeze out of precaution, Mr Tan said, adding that these decisions may be driven by sentiments rather than real market conditions. — TODAY