The New (Not So New) Divide: Employed Vs Unemployed by danliang

While initiatives such as SkillsFuture could, to an extent, enable Singaporeans to upgrade and develop new skills, it would likely not be effective for three reasons. First of all, it does not cater to the needs of most PMEs, where typical professional courses (such as Python bootcamp by General Assembly) could run into several thousands dollars. The quantum of SkillsFuture, in comparison, tend to be in the range of hundreds of dollars. For a PME to acquire sufficient depth of skills in the emerging economy, he or she would need much more subsidies than what government could offer. Such initiatives are more useful in getting workers to be employed in less knowledge-intensive sectors, which would typically be the least future-ready and value-adding for the economy.Secondly, the effectiveness of the SkillsFuture depends heavily on the receptiveness of local employers towards such qualifications. Based on the typical job ads in government Job Bank, the employers are likely to filter the candidates by their traditional educational qualifications or relevant work experience. Hence, even if a PME is willing to switch to new domain by undergoing skills upgrading, the chance of getting employed is relatively slim compared to a fresh graduate with relevant qualification (and probably lower manpower cost). This situation could be improved if the public service take the initiative to move away from filtering candidates based on their educational qualifications or relevant job experience to one that focuses on their skill sets.Thirdly, the government has limited leverage over the courses Singapoeeans chose to attend. Hence, it could be misused by Singaporeans to attend courses that are more interesting, but less relevant to future economy. Hence, the initiative should ideally have a structured format that entice Singaporeans to develop relevant skill sets with sufficient depth.