Why Are Singapore Employers Still Struggling to Hire When More People Are Looking for Jobs?

ManagementOctober 01, 2026 09:00

A Singapore hiring manager and HR colleague reviewing candidate shortlists together.

It's a combination that shouldn't make sense on paper: a large share of Singapore's workforce is actively looking for a new role, and yet Singapore employers continue to report real difficulty filling their vacancies. If there are more candidates in motion, filling a role should, in theory, get easier. In practice, many Singapore hiring managers say the opposite is true. The gap between candidate supply and hiring confidence isn't a contradiction. It's a matching problem, and it's one employers have more influence over than they may think.

The mismatch, in the data

Reeracoen and Rakuten Insight's Beyond the Paycheque study of 337 Singapore working adults found that 71.8% were engaged in some form of job search activity, whether actively applying or simply monitoring the market for a better opportunity. At the same time, Reeracoen and Rakuten Insight's separate study of 375 Singapore-based hiring managers, Hiring Managers Unfiltered, found that only 23.2% felt very confident in finding qualified local talent, with 49.1% only somewhat confident and 27.7% reporting neutral to low confidence.

Read together, these two studies describe the same labour market from opposite sides: many working adults are monitoring or pursuing opportunities, while employers report limited confidence in finding qualified local talent. The most commonly cited hiring challenges in the same employer survey were salary expectations (80.3%), skills mismatch (65.1%) and a lack of experienced candidates (56.3%), which together point to where the friction actually sits.

Why a bigger candidate pool doesn't automatically mean easier hiring

More people looking for work does not mean more people who match a specific role's requirements. Three dynamics help explain the gap.

Requirements are often more specific than the available pool. A large volume of active jobseekers can still leave a genuine shortage for a role that requires a narrow combination of skills, sector experience and seniority. Volume and fit are different things, and hiring managers citing skills mismatch as a top challenge are describing this gap directly.

Salary expectations and role realities aren't always aligned from the outset. With 80.3% of hiring managers citing salary expectations as a challenge, a meaningful share of the friction may sit in candidates and roles that are broadly a fit, but where the starting expectation and the budgeted range haven't yet been reconciled, rather than a genuine absence of qualified people.

Experience requirements can be calibrated for a market that no longer exists. A role specification written for a tighter labour market, or copied forward from a previous hire, may ask for a level of experience that filters out capable candidates who could do the job with a shorter ramp-up, contributing to the 56.3% of hiring managers who cite a lack of experienced candidates as a challenge.

None of this means the pool of genuinely qualified candidates is as large as the headline job-search figure suggests. It means some of the reported shortage is a function of how tightly requirements are drawn, not purely how few qualified people exist.

What employers can practically change

Separate "must-have" from "nice-to-have" before the role goes live. Reviewing a job specification line by line, and testing whether each requirement is genuinely necessary to perform the role or has simply always been included, can widen the addressable pool without lowering the bar for the role itself.

Build salary flexibility into the process, not just the offer. Where a candidate's stated expectation is close to, but above, the budgeted range, having an early, direct conversation about the gap gives both sides the chance to close it, rather than letting a mismatch end the process before it's actually tested.

Weight demonstrated capability alongside years of experience. For roles where the market genuinely has more demand than supply at the exact experience level requested, considering candidates who can show relevant capability through recent projects, certifications or a related but shorter track record can meaningfully expand who's in the running.

Move quickly once genuine fit is identified. In a market where a large share of professionals are actively job hunting, a strong-fit candidate is unlikely to be considering only one opportunity. Delays between stages cost employers candidates who would otherwise have been a good match.

What this means for Singapore employers right now

The evidence doesn't support the idea that Singapore's talent pool is simply too small. It supports a more specific and more solvable problem: many employers are trying to match very particular requirements against a broad but not infinitely flexible pool of active candidates, and the friction shows up as reported difficulty rather than an absence of people. Employers who treat this as a matching and process question, rather than purely a supply question, are better placed to convert a highly active jobseeker market into filled roles.

Frequently asked questions

Why can't Singapore employers find candidates when so many people are job hunting?

A large, active jobseeker pool doesn't guarantee a match for every specific role. Reeracoen's research identifies salary expectations, skills mismatch and a lack of experienced candidates as the most commonly reported hiring challenges, rather than an absence of qualified candidates overall.

Are Singapore employers genuinely facing a talent shortage?

The two studies suggest that candidate availability alone does not resolve employers' hiring difficulties. Hiring managers report real difficulty (only 23.2% feel very confident finding qualified local talent), while a large share of the workforce is simultaneously monitoring or pursuing opportunities, which suggests requirements and process, alongside candidate volume, shape the outcome.

What is the biggest hiring challenge Singapore employers report?

Salary expectations, cited by 80.3% of the 375 hiring managers surveyed, followed by skills mismatch (65.1%) and a lack of experienced candidates (56.3%).

How can employers reduce matching friction without lowering their hiring standards?

Reviewing job requirements to separate genuine must-haves from inherited preferences, building room for salary conversations earlier in the process, and giving weight to demonstrated capability alongside years of experience can widen the qualified pool without reducing the bar for the role.

Take the next step

If your team wants a second view on where matching friction may be narrowing your candidate pool, speak to a Reeracoen consultant about reviewing your current hiring process.

If you're actively job hunting in Singapore and want help positioning your application against what employers are actually screening for, register with Reeracoen to be matched with roles that fit your experience.

About the Author

Valerie Ong, Regional Head of Marketing, Reeracoen Group. Valerie leads content and market insights for Reeracoen across Asia. She works closely with Reeracoen's specialist recruitment consultants to translate hiring data, salary benchmarks and labour market trends into practical guidance for Singapore's employers and professionals. Her work draws on Reeracoen's proprietary research including the annual Salary Guide, Hiring Pulse, and Hiring Manager Survey.

This article is published in English. Reeracoen Singapore also publishes selected content in Chinese and Japanese for our bilingual and Japanese-speaking professional community.

References

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