The real nominal median income for all employed residents rose by only 1.1% to $2,500 in 2010.
After two consecutive years of negative real income growth in 2009 (- 1.8%) and 2008, six years (2001 to 2006) whereby median income hardly moved, and just one year of significant rise in 2007, the bottom line is that real wage growth for the last 10 years or so,
is only about slightly over one per cent per annum.
With inflation running at 3.5% now, and the Minister of State for Trade and Industry’s (MTI) recent announcement in Parliament that inflation is expected to hit 4% by the end of this year,
it is likely that workers may see a third consecutive year of negative real wage growth.
The real median monthly income from work of residents in full-time employment only increased by 1.8% to $2,710 in 2010.
Part-timers’ real median monthly income increased significantly by 11% to $700 in 2010.
Since the definition of a part-timer was changed from 2009, from working 30 to 35 hours a week, this increase in income may be due to some extent to more people not being able to get work of more than 35 hours a week.
If someone works seven hours a day, for five days a week, would you consider this worker as a part-timer?
Also, how does one survive on just $700 gross income (which includes the employee’s CPF contribution) a month in Singapore?
In this connection, from 1999 to 2010, the median gross monthly income of part-timers increased by only 1.4% per annum, from $600 in 1999 to $700 in 2010 (not adjusted for inflation yet).
If we adjust for inflation, the
increase per annum is near to zero.
There were 400,100 residents who earned up to $1,200 and below per month from work, forming 21% of the workforce. This was slightly lower than 401,600 or 22% a year ago.
Why does the MOM keep using the same $1,200 benchmark, year after year, for the last 10 years, without adjusting for inflation.
After adjusting the $1,200 for inflation, I estimate the percentage of residents earning less than $1,200 to be over 25%.
In 2001, 25.1% earned less than $1,200. So, I believe more people today earn less than $1,200 (inflation-adjusted), compared to 9 years ago.
If we include the non-seasonally 4.1% or 84,400 unemployed as of June, and the 10,900 discouraged unemployed, I estimate that
over 30% of residents earn less than $1,200 (inflation-adjusted)or are unemployed.
Discouraged workers are persons outside of the labour force who were not looking for a job because they believed their job search would be in vain.
176,700 or 9.0% of employed residents in 2010 were part-timers, up from 156,200 or 8.4% in 2009. Around half or 49% of the part-timers in 2010 were willing and available to work additional hours (i.e. underemployed), down from 52% a year ago.
However, the number of underemployed residents rose from 80,500 or 4.3% of all employed residents to 86,600 or 4.4% over the year.
Once out of work, mature residents were more likely to stay unemployed for extended periods. Close to three in ten (28%) resident job seekers aged 40 & over had been looking for work for at least 25 weeks in June 2010, higher than two in ten (20%) for all job seekers.
Of all the categories of workers, Service & Sales workers had the highest unemployment rate of 5.5%. Even Cleaners, Labourers & Related workers had the third highest unemployment rate of 5.3%.
Aren’t these the jobs that we have been constantly told that Singaporeans don’t want? If so, then why is the unemployment rate so high for these workers?
Does this mean that even Cleaners and Labourers who lost their jobs, had difficulty getting re-employed in the same jobs?
To what extent has our liberal foreign worker policy contributed to this?
In my view, the above statistics clearly indicate that
many Singaporeans may not be better off over the last decade or so.
Median” I have explained above. It is the figure that is the halfway mark: half the population would be below the figure and half above it.
“Mean” is what the layman calls the “average”. In the case of incomes, it is naturally weighted by the number of persons within the same income band.
Because the distribution of incomes in virtually all societies is skewed, with lots of low-income earners and few higher-income people, there’s always a gap between median and mean. Generally speaking, the more skewed the income distribution, the larger the gap.
Now, look back at Singapore’s figures for 2009 and 2010. Last year, the mean income (S$3,609) was 49.1 percent higher than median income (S$2,420). This year — 2010 — the mean income (S$3,819) is 52.8 percent higher than median income ($2,500). The gap is increasing. Again.
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