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The Employment Market Is Tightening — And It’s Reshaping Careers at Every Stage

Derrick Yuen, MBA
1 day ago
5 min read

There is growing anxiety in Singapore—and across many developed economies—about employment prospects. While public attention often focuses on fresh graduates, the pressure is being felt more broadly.

Two groups, in particular, are navigating a tougher market:

New and recent graduates (0–3 years of experience) who have not had enough time to build meaningful work experience or a track record
Mid-career professionals who once had stable roles, but are now displaced—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly—by technology, AI, and structural change

The frustration is understandable.

But before concluding that the system is broken, it helps to step back and understand what is changing, what is not, and what individuals can still control.

What Hasn’t Changed (And Still Matters)

Employment has always been a derived demand

Jobs do not exist because people need work. They exist because organisations need to create economic value.

When value creation slows, changes form, or can be achieved with fewer people, employment adjusts—often painfully. This has always been true, regardless of the generation involved.

Hiring has always been shaped by risk and economics

Employers hire when the expected value of a hire outweighs the cost and risk.

Human capital is essential—but it is also inconsistent:

People are not interchangeable
Performance varies widely even among similar profiles
Employees can leave after being trained

This risk calculus affects graduates and experienced professionals alike, especially in uncertain times.

What Has Changed (And Why the Market Feels Harsher)

Technology no longer just replaces tasks — it reshapes entire workflows

For decades, technology automated specific tasks:

Farmers moved from manual labour to operating machinery
Factory workers shifted from production to supervision
Office workers adopted PCs, spreadsheets, and email

In most cases, people adapted because technology complemented human work.

Today’s shift feels sharper because AI does not just speed things up—it changes how much human effort is needed in the first place.

Automation has moved beyond “one right answer” work

Traditional automation excelled at structured, rule-based tasks.

Creative and judgement-heavy roles were long assumed to be safe. Generative AI has challenged that assumption by producing outputs that are often good enough across writing, design, analysis, and coding.

This does not mean entire professions disappear overnight.

But it does mean fewer people are needed to produce the same output.

Organisations will need fewer people — but different ones

As AI becomes embedded in workflows:

Output per employee increases
Entry-level roles shrink
Middle layers are compressed

Humans remain valuable where AI falls short: judgement, accountability, trust, context, and responsibility for outcomes.

What organisations are really doing is rebalancing the mix of skills they need.

Competition is intensifying across experience levels

As AI adoption and economic uncertainty continue, experienced professionals are re-entering the job market. This increases competition not just for senior roles, but also for positions traditionally seen as “safe” entry points.

Graduates are no longer competing only with peers.

Mid-career professionals are no longer protected by experience alone.

What the Singapore Data Tells Us About the Scale of the Issue

Recent Singapore data helps put numbers to these trends. Despite sentiment, Singapore unemployment rates are showing historical lows since the pandemic, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Graduate employment has improved modestly, but the number of new graduates entering the labour market has grown faster than the number of new jobs created. This creates structural competition even when headline employment figures look better.

At the same time, employer surveys point to greater caution in hiring. Many firms plan to maintain current headcount, rely more on contract or skills-based hiring, and be more selective due to economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

The result is not a collapse in employment—but a market that is tighter, slower, and less forgiving, especially for those without a clear value proposition.

The Core Reality: Employers Hire Value, Not Profiles

Whether you are 23 or 43, employers are asking the same fundamental question:

Can you help me reduce cost, increase revenue, reduce risk, or operate more effectively in today’s environment?

Degrees, job titles, and years of experience are still signals—but they are weaker than before.

What matters more is demonstrated contribution.

This is where the response differs by career stage.

A Call to Action for New & Recent Graduates (0–3 Years)

The challenge for graduates today is not that jobs no longer exist—it’s that employers are less willing to take risks.

This shifts the burden onto candidates to:

Seek real work exposure, not symbolic internships
Avoid roles where they leave without tangible outcomes
Look beyond brand-name employers and consider SMEs, where problems are real and impact is visible

The goal is no longer just to “get a job”, but to build a track record of value creation early.

A Call to Action for Mid-Career Professionals

If you were strong before AI

AI can amplify your effectiveness—if you lean into it.

Those with solid judgement and domain expertise can:

Increase output
Focus on higher-value decisions
Validate and take responsibility for AI-assisted work

This combination remains highly valuable.

If you were average before AI

AI raises the baseline. Tasks that once justified a role are now easily automated.

The priority here is adaptation:

Integrate AI into daily workflows
Improve productivity and reliability
Demonstrate how you still add value in a changing environment

This may not future-proof a career—but it can buy time and relevance.

If you resist change

Experience without adaptation is no longer protection.

In a market shaped by technology and uncertainty, resistance increases—not reduces—the risk of displacement.

A More Useful Way to Look at This Moment

What Singapore—and much of the world—is experiencing is not unprecedented. Previous generations went through painful adjustments too, from the arrival of personal computers to the internet and globalisation.

The key difference is this:

the current generation is feeling the pain now, without having lived through earlier transitions.

History suggests that survival—and success—did not come from complaining, waiting, or outsourcing responsibility. It came from:

Watching the trends
Adjusting approaches
Relearning how to present one’s value

Not everything has changed.

What organisations look for—value, contribution, reliability—remains the same.

What has changed is how that value is created and how it must be demonstrated.

In the end, adaptability and grit will separate those who merely survive the new employment market from those who find ways to thrive within it.

A Call to Think — and Act — Differently

If this piece resonated, the intent is not to provoke fear or assign blame, but to encourage better conversations about complex problems like employment, technology, and careers. These are large, emotionally charged issues, yet they require clear thinking, not slogans.

In our work, we’ve seen that those who navigate disruption best are not necessarily the most technical or the loudest—but those who can step back, analyse problems objectively, understand trade-offs, and translate insights into practical action. These are learnable skills.

If you’re interested in developing this way of thinking—whether you’re a graduate, a mid-career professional, or a leader—we regularly run classes designed to help participants break down complex issues, work with data and evidence, and make sense of uncertainty in a structured, meaningful way. Beyond tools and techniques, the focus is on how to think clearly when the stakes are high and the answers are not obvious.

At the very least, I’d welcome your perspectives and experiences. If you disagree, even better—thoughtful disagreement is often where the most learning happens.