SINGAPORE: The proportion of university graduates who found employment within six months of taking their final exams dropped to 89.6 per cent in 2023 from 93.8 per cent the year before.
This is according to the results of the annual Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey released on Thursday (Feb 22).
The median gross monthly salary among fresh graduates in full-time permanent employment rose slightly, however, increasing by 2.7 per cent to S$4,313 (US$3,215) from S$4,200 in 2022. The figure rose by 10.5 per cent between 2021 and 2022.
Of the 10,900 fresh graduates in the labour force polled in the 2023 survey, 84.1 per cent were in full-time permanent employment, down from 87.5 per cent in 2022.
Freelancers, meanwhile, accounted for 1.5 per cent of those in the labour force, a decrease from 1.8 per cent in 2022.
The figure for those in part-time or temporary employment was 4 per cent, down from 4.5 per cent in 2022.
About a quarter of those employed on a part-time or temporary basis – 1.1 per cent of all respondents in the labour force – were in involuntary part-time or temporary employment in 2023, compared to 0.8 per cent in 2022, according to the survey.
Of the remaining respondents in the labour force, 3.6 per cent were unemployed but commencing work soon or starting a business venture, while 6.8 per cent were unemployed and still looking for work.
The health sciences, information and digital technologies, and business clusters recorded the highest full-time permanent employment rates.
The survey was conducted by the National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the Singapore Management University (SMU) and the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS).
Singapore’s two other autonomous universities – the Singapore University of Technology and Design and the Singapore Institute of Technology – will release the results of their own surveys separately at later dates.