As the class of 2026 join the race to find jobs, unemployed college graduates in Singapore are taking a last-ditch shot at getting ahead: temporary government-funded gigs that earn them half the median first paycheck.
The government’s Graduate Industry Traineeships, known as GRIT, offer a stopgap for graduates to gain industry-relevant experience with government agencies or private businesses, with an allowance of 1,800 to 2,400 Singapore dollars ($1,400 to $1,850) per month. The lowest end of that range is less than half the median graduate’s starting salary and around two-thirds the wage of a McDonald’s Corp. management trainee, who needs only a pre-university diploma.
“When I started the program, I thought: ‘Shucks. I’ve finished four years of school and all I’ve got is a job that pays half of what my friends get’,” said Lee Jia En, a 25-year-old graduate from the Singapore University of Social Sciences. “But I felt it was worth it if it could help me get to my next job. So I said OK, let’s eat humble pie.”
Governments around the world have been laboring to prop up a sagging graduate jobs market amid a surge in artificial-intelligence adoption, a post-pandemic slowdown in hiring and lingering economic impacts from the Iran war.
