Here is an interesting post from Lucky Singaporean:Lucky then goes on to point out what he thinks is the root cause of the problem. Do click on the earlier link."PMET is an abbreviation for professionals, managers, executives and technicians. The employment prospects for a PMET above 40 is poor during the good times....and worse than poor during the bad times. During the good times, the govt coined this euphemistic term "structural unemployment" to describe the problem.
The proposed govt solution has been the same in good times and bad- retraining, retraining, retraining. When retraining does not work, what does the govt propose? More retraining. Right now the govt is proposing to have more 40 conversion schemes for PMETs [Link].
Do you think they will solve the problem if they have 100 conversion schemes?... make that 200. The problem is not the skills but the age of these people and the ability of employers to practice age discrimination a.k.a ageism."
Here's what I think is another cause of the problem. Traditionally, employees get a salary increment every year (barring exceptionally bad years). You get the annual salary increment just for being there (in contrast, promotions and bonuses are more directly linked to your actual work performance).
Over X years, an employee gets X years' worth of annual salary increments. When you're a junior member of the staff, this doesn't necessarily add up to much. However, the longer you work, the more expensive you become, as your salary is increasing year after year.
Then this becomes the key question. Is the value of your work contributions keeping pace with the small but steady increase in your salary, year after year after year? For many PMETs over 40, the answer is - apparently not.
In subsequent posts, I will discuss further.