Even Singapore is suffering from the side-effects of affluence and growing competition from less-developed countries in the region and disk drive makers in the city state have been warned they have to increase output while keeping employee head-count steady or the industry will be faced with job losses. Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong Lee said at a recent Economic Development Board dinner; If disk drive makers double and triple their unit output with no increase in head count, they will not by themselves create more jobs – but unless they do that, many disk drive jobs will be lost. He also said the likes of Seagate Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Maxtor Corp all plan to double and triple unit output over the next few years with no additional staff.
