The Population of Singapore (Third Edition)

12. Labour Force

271 12 Labour Force The amount of labour available for the production of goods and services in a country is determined by a variety of demographic, social and economic factors. The size of the total population and its composition with respect to sex and age determine the maximum limit of the number of persons who can participate in economic activities. Other factors such as race composition, the degree of urbanisation and the proportion of married women play an important part in influencing the proportion of the population in certain age groups in the working population. Among the more important economic and social factors are the industrial structure of the economy, the mode and organisation of production, the per capita income, and the traditional attitudes towards working women and child labour. By and large, demographic factors are the principal determinants of the size of the male working population since by tradition nearly all men are engaged in some form of gainful work from the time they reach adulthood until they approach the retirement age. On the other hand, socio-economic factors seem to exert a greater influence on the size of the female working population. The labour force of the country is that section of the population which is engaged in the production of goods and services during a particular period. By far the most complete and comprehensive statistics on the labour force are those made available in the regular series of population censuses. By means of these census data, an attempt will be made to examine the growth of the labour force and the participation rates in terms of various socio-demographic factors. Part of the chapter will also be devoted to an appraisal of the industrial and occupational patterns of the labour force which would in a way reflect the manner in which the people of Singapore earn their living. 272 POPULATION OF SINGAPORE ConCepts and definitions Labour force statistics can be collected by means of the gainful worker approach or the labour force approach.1 The older gainful worker concept was widely used before World War II and even during the early post-war years in some countries. In Singapore, it was last used in September 1947 when the first post-war census of population was conducted. According to this concept, the respondents were requested to state their usual occupation or gainful work from which they earned their money without reference to any time period. Those who were performing gainful work were considered to be in the labour force, while those without any such work were considered to be out of the labour force. Apart from the absence of a specific time reference for the figures, this method of collecting statistics cannot provide figures for the employed and the unemployed separately. For the labour force approach, all respondents above a certain age were asked to state whether they were working during the reference period, and if not, whether they were actively looking for work. Working is defined as being engaged in the production of goods and services for pay or profit. All those who were identified as working or actively looking for work during the reference period were considered as economically active and included in the labour force. Those identified as not working and not actively looking for work were regarded as economically inactive and put outside the labour force. The labour force approach was used in Singapore in the five population censuses held in 1957, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. Persons reported as working constituted the employed, while those identified as not working but looking for work and those planning to start their own business comprised the unemployed. The former group included persons who were actually working during the reference period as well as persons who had a job but were temporarily laid off on account of sickness, leave, strike, bad weather, and so forth, and would be returning to work in due course. The unemployed group consisted of persons who had worked previously and were looking for jobs during the reference period, as well as those who had never worked before and were looking for jobs for the first time. Actively looking for work was defined as registering at an employment exchange, inserting and answering job advertisements, applying directly to prospective employers, making enquiries from relatives and friends, or taking steps to start one’s own business. The economically inactive population included all persons who were not working and not actively looking for work during...