SINGAPORE: In a recent Facebook post, Progress Singapore Party’s Stephanie Tan expressed alarm over the results of the most recent graduate employment survey, which had shown that fewer Singapore university graduates found jobs within six months of finishing their final exams than in the previous year.
The results were released on March 5.
“I am very concerned about the results of the latest graduate employment survey. The proportion of fresh graduates who have applied for but have yet to receive any full-time permanent job offers has more than doubled from 4.1 per cent in 2023 to 8.5 per cent in 2025,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
She also noted that less than three-quarters of the graduates had found full-time permanent employment half a year after graduating.
Ms Tan, who contested under the PSP in last year’s election and is a member of the party’s CEC, said that she found the replacement of entry-level jobs entirely by artificial intelligence to be a “very worrying” trend, and suggested that the government introduce wage credits and subsidies to firms, as these create more jobs for fresh graduates.
However, she acknowledged that the Manpower Ministry recognises the value of skilled labour as well as its pledge to strengthen career progression for skilled trades workers, beginning with those in the electrical trade, which Ms Tan said she was encouraged by.
“I hope that MOM will follow through on ensuring we have a stable pipeline of locals with these critical skill sets. Further professionalising and raising the wages of these trades would also encourage more young students to pick up trades that are less easily replaceable by AI,” she added.
Ms. Tan underlined how it is key for Singapore society to move from the perception that white-collar jobs are better than blue-collar ones. She added, however, that such a mindset change must start within the educational system, where different talents and abilities should be equally rewarded.
This way, parents and children in Singapore “truly trust that there are diverse pathways to success.”
Graduate Employment Survey 2025
The Joint Graduate Employment Survey is conducted by the six Autonomous Universities: the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, the Singapore Management University, the Singapore University of Social Sciences, the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and the Singapore Institute of Technology each year to collect information regarding the employment status of graduates six months after they take their final exams. A total of 19,887 fresh and 771 follow-up graduates from these institutions were surveyed in November 2025.
In 2024, 87.1 per cent of graduates found employment within half a year. Last year, this figure went down to 83.4 per cent. The results of the survey showed a continuing decline from 2022.
Moreover, the median monthly salary has stayed the same over the past year at S$4,500. /TISG
