Living
Very tough in Singapore
Strong relative growth over past four years, but some Singaporeans fall behind. Littlespeck.com.

The following is excerpted from soc.culture.singapore
Feb 2 2008

By SiPayCharm
I am 60 years old. I have been unable to get proper work since I got retrenched more than 10 years ago. People in my age group then were considered old.
I even went for retraining for other jobs, but my application for work were always turned down because of my old age.
Looks like I am exceptionally and extremely old by the employer's age scale in Singapore, and yet very young in the CPF's proposed withdrawal age starting from 80 years old.
I had worked as a taxi driver crouching in the driver's seat and driving for 14 hours a day and can't make much. I gave up because my spine was injured for crouching too long.
It could be worse in the foreseeable future because the government is going to bring in more foreigners to increase the population to 5.5 millions. It doesn't make sense.
We local born Singaporean are being squeezed out of place and are suffering. Our suffering bells are ringing but our multi-millionaire ministers can't hear it.
For the time being I have to share my coffee shop table cleaning work with foreign workers as a stand by.
I have to struggle by picking cans and cardboards to earn myself two decent meals a day.

Zai Zai
Even the younger generations are having difficulties, they have to serve (NS) national service and then after serving NS also difficult to find jobs as many corporations, including GLCs, prefer to look for those who don't need to serve NS (in camp duty).
Want to get into NUS, NTU also cannot because government only sponsor and give places to foreign students whot can only speak one language, but require local students to do very well in two languages.
Okay, cannot get into local Univ. then try local polytechnics.
After graduation from poly, foreign students are guaranteed jobs but local students have to look hard for jobs in classified advs. and may need be take up contract position.
Lecturers and professors often discriminate local students over foreign students, they have connections and friends in organisations that are recruiting new employees, only recommend students that they know or preference given to students that came from same country.
For example if you have a teacher who is a foreigner from Malaysia or India, he will recommend the good jobs to students who are also from Malaysia or India, leaving only the lousy or unwanted ones to the local students.
Local students that take up contractual positions are also just as bad, employers will not want to upgrade skill for these contractual staffs.
Contract employees are susceptible of being dismissed, especially during corporate cost cutting measure.
If you work too long being a contractual staff moving on will be especially difficult because your salary over the years may have increased slightly but your skills are low.
Eventually, trying to move to a better horizon will be much difficult or impossible and often at a greater loss, especially on salary and position.
To sum it up, it is better to be a foreign student looking for job in this forsaken country.
Adding to this, our government does not help, it constantly refuses to accept the plight of citizens and continue to make live difficult for us young and older generations.
Soc. Culture Singapore.