UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS (Capturing of)

Mr Chew Heng Ching asked the Minister for Labour how unemployment statistics are captured in Singapore.

The Minister for Labour (Mr Lee Yock Suan): Mr Speaker, Sir, unemployment statistics are obtained by the Research and Statistics Department of my Ministry through sample surveys of households every quarter. The sample households are selected by a rigorous statistical procedure which ensures that they are an accurate representation of the population.

The main survey is in June each year when about 25,000 households representing about 5% of total households in Singapore are interviewed. The other surveys are in March and September (when about 4,000 households are surveyed) and in December (when about 8,000 households are surveyed).

The selected householders are personally interviewed by surveyors and asked for details on their employment status, occupation, wage levels and their personal characteristics, for example, age and educational level. The data from these surveys are used to estimate the total number of unemployed persons in Singapore as well as the profile of the workforce.

Mr Chew Heng Ching (Kaki Bukit): Sir, may I ask the Minister whether in capturing unemployment statistics, the Ministry officials distinguish between what we call "hardcore unemployment" (people who have been unemployed for perhaps more than 12 months) and "frictional unemployment" (people who are in job transition, temporarily unemployed)?

Mr Lee Yock Suan: Mr Speaker, Sir, in our surveys, we do ask the householders how long they have been unemployed and whether they are actively looking for a job. This question of hardcore unemployment is partly a question of definition because even those who have been unemployed for, say, 12 months, may get jobs subsequently and are replaced by others. We do have data on what group has been unemployed for how long, and how many in each category. The data show that between June 1986 and December 1986 the number of people who have been unemployed for more than 12 months has gone down.