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Feature Articles

Employment Trends During The COVID-19 Pandemic

24 November 2021

This article has been migrated from an earlier version of the site and may display formatting inconsistencies.

Since the 1990s, Singapore has experienced four major economic downturns – the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998, dot-com bust in 2001, Global Financial Crisis in 2009 and COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.1 While each of these recessions had different origins and exhibited different characteristics2 (see Toh & Lim, 2001; Lee, 2009; Soon & Tee, 2009; Saw et al., 2020; Rahmat et al., 2021), they all entailed employment losses alongside a contraction or sharp slowdown in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This box article examines the employment trends in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a comparison with the peak-to-trough employment declines seen in previous recessions; and also changes in its unemployment rate over the course of the pandemic compared to other advanced economies.

Download for the full article [PDF, 162 KB].

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