[SINGAPORE] The new graduate traineeship programme announced in the National Day Rally will offer 800 roles initially, with details to come when applications open in October.
The placements will range from three to six months, with monthly allowances of S$1,800 to S$2,400, said Manpower Minister Tan See Leng on Friday (Aug 22).
“We are prepared to increase the level of support for fresh graduates, including funding more traineeships, if the labour market worsens,” he said, adding that the final amount of funding will depend on how many traineeships are taken up.
Workforce Singapore (WSG) will identify host companies to take part in the scheme. For a start, these include Grab, Micron, OCBC, ST Engineering, as well as Sea and its subsidiaries.
They are offering roles in areas such as data science, strategy and planning, business analytics, digital marketing and engineering.
WSG said that it will identify more “progressive” host companies in growth sectors such as financial services, information and communication technology, manufacturing, and wholesale trade.
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Public and private sector roles
The government will fund 70 per cent of trainee allowances, with employers covering the rest. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said in a statement that allowances may vary depending on the scope of each traineeship.
The 800 roles will be across two programmes: the Graduate Industry Traineeships (Grit) scheme for private sector roles, and Grit@Gov for public sector traineeships. The number of roles in each is yet to be determined.
Both programmes are open to Singaporean and permanent resident fresh graduates from local universities, polytechnics, the Institutes of Technical Education, and other institutions such as private and overseas universities.
Specifically, they are for students who graduated in 2024 or 2025, including those who completed their education in 2025 but will receive qualifications or certificates only in 2026.
Applications open in October, with details on the offered traineeships to come then.
“I hope graduates will make the best use of these opportunities,” said Dr Tan. “I also urge employers to take a long-term view, and recognise fresh graduates will be a critical part of your talent pipeline.”
He noted that, separately, the public sector is offering about 2,400 immediate vacancies for fresh graduates via the Careers@Gov job portal. These include roles in data, tech and digital services.
Job worries
In his National Day Rally speech on Aug 17, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong acknowledged that many young graduates are worried about jobs.
The traineeship programme is something that can be done in the near term, he said, in addition to efforts to grow the economy and create jobs. He noted that it will be scaled up if economic conditions deteriorate.
PM Wong drew comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic, when hiring froze but some companies remained willing to offer traineeships. The government thus launched the SGUnited Traineeships programme, funding 80 per cent of trainee allowances.
The programme ran from June 2020 to March 2022, supporting more than 12,500 trainees. Close to nine in 10 found jobs within six months of completing the programme.
Asked why Grit traineeships are shorter than the SGUnited ones of up to 12 months, Dr Tan replied that Singapore’s job market is still fairly resilient, as of June.
Institutes of higher learning report that more than 90 per cent of their fresh graduates get jobs within six months, he pointed out.
He added that the SGUnited Traineeships were introduced in response to Covid-19, when the economy was in a “very deep downturn”.
“I don’t think we are seeing that kind of downturn,” said the minister. “We don’t think that we need to go full ‘hawk’ at this particular point in time.”
Asked if trainees should then expect full-time jobs, Dr Tan replied that the idea is to expose them to different jobs and help them build networks, even while the hope is that host companies will offer “meaningful, permanent” roles. “(The host companies) are not beholden to each and every single one of the trainees,” he explained. “The trainee also has an option to, after the exposure, continue to look for a full-time job (elsewhere).”
As for fears that participating companies may use trainees as a cheap source of labour – perhaps even replacing other workers – Dr Tan said that the Grit programme was carefully sized to not “cannibalise” existing roles.
“Companies must not have retrenchment plans in place so that they can then use this as a cheap source of labour. And we will be very strict in terms of how we dispense and disperse these monies.”
