Dear TRS,
I Refer to MOM's Job Vacancies 2014 report released on Tuesday (27 Jan). Some of the jobs listed as having the most vacancies are registered nurse (640), enrolled/assistant nurse (430) and pre-primary education teacher (240).
(See also: Job Vacancies for Nurses and Sales Assistant are Shunned by Locals: MOM Data)
I have compiled a chart of the respective employment rates and starting salaries of nurses and early childhood education teachers and wish to highlight that the issue is clearly to do with an unattractive pay.
MOM said that locals shun these jobs but it’s not because of them being “hard” or “low-class”, its simply that we cannot get a decent salary.
How can we expect to want to take a low salary job when we need to support a family and house and the ever rising cost of living?
The stats in the following charts are from the Poly Graduate Employment Survey of 2013 broken down by course.
Health Sciences (Nursing); Nursing (Fresh Graduates):
Employment rate declined from 94% to 90% is this because of interest/passion for nursing fizzling out, unattractive pay or pursuing further studies?
Median monthly gross salary met the 2013/2014 overall median of $2,000, but is this enough to attract more young people to join the profession?
Child Psychology & Early Education; Early Childhood Education; Early Childhood Studies (Fresh Graduates):
As you can see, the Employment numbers don't look good. For example, the early childhood education diploma - employment rate in 2013 was only 75%. This means if the school invests in training 100 teachers, 25 eventually didn't find a job within 6 months of graduation. That is a waste of training effort! The employment rate was worse in 2008, only 51%!
Small pay raises help to increase the employment rate since then, but it is still below the median starting salary (all diplomas). There is still a lot of room to up these people's pay. The childcare centres are always charging parents higher rates; why aren't they paying our young people a fair wage?
A more comprehensive chart of the Poly GES 2013 is available here.
SGCharts.com - http://pay.sgcharts.com/diploma.html
Editing by The Real Singapore