We have seen close to a hundred jobless PMETs by now for this year and it looks like a new record since our annual average is about 200 clients for the past five years.
The emails just came flooding in and maybe our two protest events on the 6.9 million population white paper have generated much publicity for our services for the unemployed.
Introduction
The two very common complaints from this jobless professional group are ageism and the foreign influx. Both reasons carry equal weightage when we spoke about why they have been jobless for so long.
Ageism is a sick disease worldwide and especially so in Singapore whereby the aged worker is avoided like the plague.
Some younger hirers are also afraid to employ the experienced oldie for fear that their own rice bowls will be snatched one day by the new hiring.
Sydney vs Singapore
While working in the community service in Sydney many years back, I saw that most of the work force is above 40 years old – I hardly saw anyone who is in their 20s or 30s working in the nursing home - maybe those older ones find that community work suited them well. Foreigners working there are mainly helpers and the managers are mostly Aussies.
They also have a minimum wage of close to A$30, 000 and it helps them to survive in any job that they could find.
They are also protectionist in nature and many companies need to prove by showing evidences that they could not find anyone suitable locally before they can hire a foreigner.
Over here, when the HR person is a 20-something and you are 50 years old, chances are there will be some miscommunication during the interview and you can kiss your hope completely goodbye if the HR guy is a foreigner.
Ageism a problem here?
Employers are afraid to hire someone above 40 years old for fear that he is difficult to train – old dogs don’t take to new tricks easily and if the office environment is one that is hip and trendy, they will also not consider someone older for fear that he can’t blend in.
I beg to differ as I feel that older workers are more steady and composed due to their years of experience and maturity. They may learn things slower compared to their younger counterparts but for sure they will try their best to learn the ropes even if they have to stay back.
They will also stay longer in the job and seldom job hop compared to the Generation Y group as they cherish the job opportunity that comes with it.
I have a jobless PME who is 62 years old and was recently hired to do sales in a local IT company. He was over the moon when he got the job as he has ben searching for many months.
Yet there are also many others who blamed the foreign influx for their jobless state.
Of course, skill mismatch, high expectations and lack of enthusiasm to job search are some of the other reasons listed by jobseekers on why they are still jobless after many months
Incidentally, an employer told me how he found one of our jobseekers to be so lacklustre while answering the interview questions that they didn’t hire him as he does not seem to be very interested in getting a job.
They finally found someone else who showed more enthusiasm and interest in landing the job even though experience wise he lost out to the first person. Talk about performing at your best during an interview…
I am not sure which reason is the main one that keeps many of our PMETs unemployed but I could see that 70% of our clients are aged above 40 years old and majority of them are above 50 years old.
Why educated experienced PMEs still jobless
Its tough seeing well educated PMETs with gleaming resumes showing up at my office for a chat – they have lost a lot of their confidence and esteem by the time they saw me.
Many have overseas working experience and their careers usually have packages exceeding close to $70, 000 a year.
Nevertheless, a great majority of them remain down to earth when out job searching and many are ready to get a pay cut of close to 30 to even 50 percent in order to and a job.
They are often trapped in having to care for their growing dependents – who may still be in school-going age and their home mortgages are still outstanding. Some have confided that their prolonged joblessness have jeopardised their marriages and a few have actually filed for divorce.
The social ills of joblessness are often seldom discussed and publicised in our society and I have even heard of some who took their lives due to prolonged unemployment. Fortunately, on our watch, we have yet to hear of someone successfully committing suicide yet.
Our aging PMETs are however surprisingly clueless when asked whether they want to switch line and understandingly the prefer to go back to their own trade as it involves less retraining and hopefully a better package due to their work experience.
Few have attempted any coaching classes and rarely do I hear of any who have tried out profiling tests to gauge their career suitability in certain trades.
They are also poor at networking and seldom venture out of their comfort zone to mingle and get to know more people.
Yet fewer have garner enough courage or financial muscle to start a business after working for the past few decades.
Those with money on hand prefer to trade on their own to earn a quick buck or two effortlessly.
Risk taking must be on the lowest rung of endeavour for Singaporeans in this part of the world whereby many Asians make their money from businesses.
Moreover, for those PMETs who want to go for retraining, they also do not know what they want and even if they are keen many do not really understand how the retooling system works i.e. what line to switch to and how long the whole upgrading programme entails.
Maybe after years of high protected employment, our aging PMETs really have problem staying jobless in a economy that is severely besieged by the perils of globalisation and our open-door policy.
To make matters worse, many of our aged PMEs are also made jobless because they are been replaced by an incoming foreigner.
When they have a chance to go for interviews, they saw that their greatest competitors for work is not their own kind but foreigners who hail from all over the world – they are also younger, cheaper and hopefully brighter.
Many lost hope when they saw a foreigner hirer interviewing them as how can the person be impartial as more often than not, the foreign hirer will hire back their own kind when all things are equal. Our locals have not much chance if the playing field is so unequal.
After a while, our aged PMETs simply stay at home and lost the drive to apply for any jobs advertised – a sure sign that the person will join the long-termed unemployed (LTU) tag.
LTU is a term given to anyone who remains unemployed for more than 26 weeks and right now, for anyone jobless who is above 40 years old, a time frame of between 6 to 9 months is common.
After a while, many well educated jobless PETs took up cab driving as its easily available and have little start-up cost.
Those years of university training and decades of corporate work experience unfortunately went down the drain when that person takes up cab driving as its difficult for him to job search again while driving taxi.
Conclusion
We have close to half a million permanent residents who incidentally are foreigners and another one million EP and S-Pass holders floating around at any one time.
The key question to ask is do we need so many of them around when we could easily have close to 80, 000 PMETs unemployed or under employed?
Should we not adopt a Singaporean first hiring mentality however difficult it is right now so that our population will sense that there is hope for the country?
I have also just received news that HP has hired a lot of factory workers from PRC China paying them close to $1800/month excluding over-time pay – should not these jobs be given to Singaporeans first?
Many of us will turn old one day and how long can our society sustain when everyone of us goes jobless once we hit the big four?
Written by: Gilbert Goh
Transitioning.org - A website that helps Jobless Singaporeans find new hope in life