SINGAPORE: The Singapore economy continued to create jobs in the third quarter of 2010.
However, the Manpower Ministry said the pace has eased from the robust gains earlier in the year.
Its third quarter labour market report released on Wednesday showed employment rose by 20,500 at the end of September.
This was after growing by 24,900 jobs in the second quarter, and 36,500 in the first.
Total employment gains in the first nine months reached 82,000.
This is in contrast to an almost flat growth of 100 over the same period last year when the economy was in recession.
As for the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, this fell slightly to 2.1 per cent. This was a significant improvement from a year ago, when unemployment peaked at 3.3 per cent.
The report showed long-term unemployment had improved.
The number of residents who had been looking for work for at least 25 weeks fell to 11,200 or 0.5 per cent of the resident labour force in September.
The number of workers made redundant continued to fall from 2,280 in the second quarter of this year to 1,930 in the third quarter.
Labour productivity growth over the year moderated to 6.3 per cent in the third quarter from 15 per cent in the previous quarter, as the effects of the cyclical upturn begin to wear off.
