The decline in employment figures for polytechnic graduates in 2024 compared to the previous year could be attributed to lower hiring demand and fewer job vacancies, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said. He noted that the impact varied across different course clusters, with graduates from health sciences and humanities and social sciences maintaining strong employment outcomes, while those from engineering and digital technologies faced higher unemployment rates. “This could be due to cyclical sectoral changes, such as the downturn in the tech sector, which also affected hiring demand,” the minister said in Parliament on 4 February. Chan was responding to several MPs, including Bukit Panjang MP Liang Eng Hwa and Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, who raised concerns about the rise in unemployment rates among fresh polytechnic graduates, based on the latest Graduate Employment Survey released on 13 January. The survey, conducted by Singapore’s five polytechnics, showed that only 54.6 per cent of fresh graduates in the labour force secured full-time permanent jobs in 2024, a drop from 60 per cent in 2023 and 59 per cent in 2022. The unemployment rate among fresh polytechnic graduates rose from 7.3 per cent in 2023 to 12.5 per cent in 2024, comparable to the 12.6 per cent recorded in 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Singh, citing these figures, asked if MOE was concerned about the prospect of underemployment among polytechnic graduates. In response, Chan pointed to a growing number of polytechnic graduates opting for further studies before entering the job market. He stressed the importance of close collaboration between polytechnics, universities, and industries to better align education with workforce demands, adding that accurately forecasting future skills needs remains a complex but necessary task.