[Levin]

The Ministry of Manpower must adopt a more accurate measure of the unemployment rate in S'pore. The proportion of the adult labour force that is actively seeking employment, but is not presently engaged in productive work appears to be under-reported. Such data is estimated and based on surveys of a representative sample of households. 

These measures of economic activity in a dynamic economy are not without flaws, as they do not rely on data collected by the Central Provident Fund, Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore or even career centres operated by the community development councils.

To compound matters, displaced workers probably do not qualify for any financial assistance from the authorities, so the likelihood of them going under the radar is high.

Such methods of deriving statistics cannot accurately measure the intent of residents who are out of work.

Not just Singapore. The world needs a more accurate measurement but it is very difficult to get one as it is extremely laborious.

The definition of unemployment rate for OECD countries is:

The unemployed are people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work. The uniform application of this definition results in estimates of unemployment rates that are more internationally comparable than estimates based on national definitions of unemployment. This indicator is measured in numbers of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force and it is seasonally adjusted. The labour force is defined as the total number of unemployed people plus those in employment. Data are based on labour force surveys (LFS).  For European Union countries where monthly LFS information is not available, the monthly unemployed figures are estimated by Eurostat.


The data is mainly from surveys. And if surveys are not available, estimated.