Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author. Data sourced from Singapore Ministry of Manpower and Randstad.
In the age of the Internet, most of us are used to looking for a job online, googling for offers on one of the numerous employment boards or LinkedIn. Data in Randstad’s recently published Employer Brand Research 2026 appears to confirm that this is the case.
Because of that, it might seem easy to forget that there are many direct ways to search for a new job. However, according to the data released by Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower in Jun, they have been growing in popularity in recent years.
More Singaporeans are looking for help
In the past decade, the number of jobseekers looking for assistance at local career centres has very nearly tripled, from just over 25,000 in 2016 to over 73,000 in 2025.
Career centres are more than just a public recruitment agency.
They provide direct, individual, human assistance and coaching. They interview candidates, help prepare their resumes, advise them on potential upskilling and provide job matching services, connecting them to the right employers.
In the past, they may have been seen as a sort of “last resort” for desperate jobseekers (typically of lower educational attainment), who couldn’t land a job by applying directly. Today, they seem to have gone mainstream, attracting younger and more educated jobseekers as well.
Degree-holders have increased their share among candidates using CC services, from barely over one-fifth 10 years ago to nearly 40% last year, becoming the single largest educational group using this avenue of public job assistance.
More broadly, back in 2016, the split between secondary and lower-educated candidates and those with post-secondary education (including diplomas and degrees) was roughly 50:50.
Today, the share of those with tertiary education has risen to over 70%.
Sign of a crisis or a sign of the times?
Sceptics may see this as a sign of a growing labour market crisis, where jobs are so difficult to secure that even the highly educated Singaporeans are forced to seek specialist help instead of simply applying and attending interviews.
That might seem so, but there are two pieces of data which suggest otherwise.
Firstly, the resident and citizen unemployment rates remain low, at around or slightly below 3%.
Secondly, the success rates for job placements through career centres have been going up, even as the number of candidates has grown significantly over the past 10 years.
Overall, two out of three candidates have managed to find a job through a CC last year, including 58% of degree-holders—in both cases, these are the highest numbers on record.
Educated candidates typically find it a bit harder than those looking for simpler jobs, since their specialisation is narrower and expectations regarding pay and working conditions are higher. Nevertheless, more than half of them were successfully helped in career centres, even as demand is surging.
As it turns out, even in the digital era, some good, old-fashioned career advice, coaching and human help still work very well.
- Read other articles we’ve written on Singapore’s job landscape here.
Featured Image Credit: Careers Connect (Lifelong Learning Institute)/ Google Street View
