SINGAPORE \u2013 About seven in 10 university graduates who were unemployed six months after their final examinations had found jobs by the one-year mark, according to new government data.<\/p>\n
In a written parliamentary response on Nov 3, Education Minister Desmond Lee noted similar improvements across the graduates from other tertiary tracks who were unemployed at the six-month mark.<\/p>\n
Among polytechnic graduates who were unemployed six months after graduation, about eight in 10 had found paid work or enrolled in full-time studies at local institutes of higher learning by the one-year mark.<\/p>\n
The corresponding figure for Institute of Technical Education (ITE) graduates was nine in 10.<\/p>\n
Lee was responding to Wan Rizal (Jalan Besar GRC), who asked about unemployment rates of 2025 graduates one year after their graduation, and the support for those who remain unemployed.<\/p>\n
The latest data, which comes after concerns over weaker employment prospects for fresh graduates, offers a fuller picture of the job market, indicating that fresh job seekers may take longer to find employment,<\/span><\/a> but most do so eventually.<\/p>\n The latest graduate employment survey, released on March 5, showed that 74.4% of university graduates secured full-time positions six months after graduation<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/a>in 2025,<\/span><\/a> down from 79.4% in 2024.<\/p>\n The six autonomous universities had said in a statement that based on past cohorts, employment rates improve beyond the six-month mark.<\/p>\n They attributed the outcomes partly to more cautious hiring amid economic uncertainty and geopolitical developments, as well as a moderation in job vacancies from the post-pandemic peak.<\/p>\n Lee said the Ministry of Education uses administrative data to track the outcomes of graduate cohorts beyond the six-month snapshot provided by the graduate employment survey.<\/p>\n However, these records show only whether graduates are in paid employment, not whether a job is full-time or permanent.<\/p>\n He added that the ministry is unable to determine the proportion of graduates who are still unemployed at the 12-month mark.<\/p>\n \u201cThe remaining graduates without paid employment records could be pursuing studies in private education institutions or overseas, or working overseas or as freelancers,\u201d said Lee.<\/p>\n In a separate parliamentary reply on Nov 3, Acting Minister for Manpower Jasmin Lau gave figures showing a similar improvement in graduate employment outcomes.<\/p>\n The unemployment rates of 2025 fresh graduates from autonomous universities fell from 16.6% at the six-month mark to 7% at the one-year mark.<\/p>\n For graduates from private education institutions, the rate dipped from 24.1% to 7.1%, while that for polytechnic graduates fell from 12.8% to 3.2%.<\/p>\n Addressing Mariam Jaafar (Sembawang GRC), who asked for a breakdown of graduate unemployment rates by field of study, Lau said a large proportion of polytechnic graduates pursue further studies. This varies significantly across course clusters.<\/p>\n Sciences, engineering, and arts, design and media were the three course clusters among the 2025 autonomous university graduates that recorded the highest unemployment rates six months after graduation, ranging from about 22.5% to 19.9%.<\/p>\n For graduates from private education institutions, those who studied information and digital technologies had the highest unemployment rate six months after graduation, at 34.2%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 About seven in 10 university graduates who were unemployed six months after their final examinations had found jobs by the one-year mark, according…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/97616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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