The article that I have abstracted from the channelnewsasia.com, is about the recession that hit Singapore back in 2008. In the said article, the recession in 2008 was so bad, that it left many Singaporeans jobless due to high rate of retrenchment, that was possible to reach as high as it was during the 1998 Asian financial crisis and 2001 economic downturn that left up to 30,000 workers retrenched. Besides causing loss of jobs for many workers, the recession in 2008 subsequently affected the manufacturing sector, tourism, transportation and trading in Singapore, thus then again, causing retrenchment of workers from these industries. Due to high rate of retrenchments, foreign workers will then come into the picture to compete for jobs with the many retrenched Singaporeans. This article tells us on how the economy recession affects the whole country. Workers became jobless, Singaporeans have to compete for jobs with foreigners, manufacturing, tourism and transport were growing very weak, and jobs from these sectors were mostly affected. The government implemented foreign worker levy, to limit the quota of foreign workers in every companies, to help moderate demand for foreign workers.
As most of our opinions are biased, to me, the most critical side effect of recession is retrenchment. When people go jobless(unemployed), this leads to loss of income and also human capital, thus affecting the trading sector where people will brush aside unnecessary spending and even cutting off on necessities. During this period of recession is when the ‘cyclical unemployment’ occurs. The unemployment rate increases drastically during the period of the 2008-2009 recession, say from 3.2% in 2008 before the recession, jumping up to 4.3% during the recession, in 2009, causing up to 24,000 more unemployed Singaporeans from the already existing 9800 unemployed people in 2008. As local residents have to face the consequences through retrenchment, foreign workers will