Singapore's GRIT Program Offers Graduates Low-Paying Traineeships Amid Job Market Woes

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, earning between S$1,800 to S$2,400 (US$1,400 to US$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 management trainee, who needs only a pre-university diploma.

“When I started the programme, 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 labouring to prop up a sagging graduate jobs market amid a surge in artificial-intelligence adoption, a post-pandemic slowdown in hiring and lingering economic effects from the US-Israel war on Iran.