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 via temporary government-funded gigs that earn them half the median first pay cheque.

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.

Those headwinds run especially strong in trade dependent, energy importing Singapore. “Heightened uncertainty” has made businesses in the city state more cautious about hiring, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said in May. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has warned that some existing jobs “will disappear” because of AI.