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To start off, what is GDP?
Gross Domestic Product is the market value of all final goods and services produced in the economy during a calendar year. Its an aggregate measure of total economic production for a country, GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced by the economy during the period measured, including personal consumption, government purchases, private inventories, paid-in construction costs and the foreign trade balance.

What does GDP include?
It includes only good and services produced within the geographical boundaries of the country, regardless of the producer's nationality. In the other words, it only measures the output produced in the country itself. As an aggregate measure of total economic production for a country, GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced by the economy during the period measured, including personal consumption, government purchases, private inventories, paid-in construction costs and the foreign trade balance (exports are added, imports are subtracted).

Presented only quarterly, GDP is most often presented on an annualized percent basis. Most of the individual data sets will also be given in real terms, meaning that the data is adjusted for price changes, and is therefore net of inflation.

The GDP is an extremely comprehensive and detailed report. In fact, reading the GDP report brings us back to many of the indicators covered in earlier tutorial topics, as GDP incorporates many of them: retail sales, personal consumption and wholesale inventories are all used to help calculate the gross domestic product. Various chain-weighted indexes discussed in earlier topics are used to create Real GDP Quantity Indexes with a current base year of 2000.

Uses of GDP:
Real GDP is the one indicator that says the most about the health of the economy and the advance release will almost always move markets. It is by far the most followed, discussed and digested indicator out there - useful for economists, analysts, investors and policy makers. The general consensus is that 2.5-3.5% per year growth in real GDP is the range of best overall benefit; enough to provide for corporate profit and jobs growth yet moderate enough to not incite undue inflationary concerns. If the economy is just coming out of recession, it is OK for the GDP figure to jump into the 6-8% range briefly, but investors will look for the long-term rate to stay near the 3% level. The general definition of an economic recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

While the value of both exports and imports are included in the GDP report, imports are subtracted from total GDP, meaning that all consumer purchases of imported items are not counted as contributions toward GDP. Because the U.S. runs a current account deficit, importing far more than is exported, reported GDP figures have a slight drag on them. A related measure provided in the report, gross national product (GNP), goes one step further by only counting the value of goods and services produced by labour and property within the United States. (To learn more, read Current Account Deficits.)

The "corporate profits" and "inventory" data in the GDP report are a great resource for equity investors, as both categories show total growth during the period; corporate profits data also displays pre-tax profits, operating cash flows and breakdowns for all major sectors of the economy.

The biggest downside of this data is its lack of timeliness; investors only get one update per quarter and revisions can be large enough to significantly change the percentage change in GDP.

GDP is considered the broadest indicator of economic output and growth .It takes inflation into account, allowing for comparisons against other historical time periods. The bureau of economic analysis issues its own analysis document with each GDP release, which is a great investor tool for analysing figures and trends. The data is released quarterly.

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Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures the changes in a fixed basket of consumption goods and services that are commonly purchased by resident households overtime. It is either wise known as the cost of living index.

From http://sbr.com.sg/economy/news/singapore-cpi-expected-climb-12-in-2017, I can infer that living in Singapore will be increasingly expensive since the CPI is said to rise 1.2% in the year 2017. Additionally, from http://www.singstat.gov.sg/statistics/latest-data#1, it supports the idea of a growing cost of living as it shows how the CPI increased from 99.5 in 2016 to 99.6 in 2017, indicating a 0.7% change.

Why is this so? It is said to be partly because of a rise in commodity prices which is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. This tells us that there has been an inflation, which is true since we already know that the CPI has  increased. The cause of this inflation would be a cost-push inflation because there are fewer goods produced for the same amount of demand. Hence, the general price level is "pushed up" by the pressure on the cost of production.

What are the effects of an increasing CPI? It can greatly erode the purchasing power of our nominal income. This is especially so if our Real Income remains constant, evident in the formula, Real Income = Nominal Income / (CPI/100).

Thus, there is a possibility for individuals to be unable to pay for their daily necessities, especially if they work low-income jobs.

In conclusion, Singapore could ultimately be expensive to live in the future if the CPI continues to increase.

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Comparing the first quarter of 2017 to the last quarter of 2016, the unemployment rate in Singapore has increased from 2.2% to 2.3%. (This is the highest jobless rate since last quarter of 2009)

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/unemployment-rate?continent=asia

The unemployment rate is one of the most important economic indicators of any economy.

The unemployment rate is calculated by taking the number of (unemployed/labour force) x100%

The labour force refers to people aged 15 years and above who are employed or actively seeking employment. The employed consists of full-time workers and part-time workers.

Types of unemployment in Singapore:
1. Frictional - caused by the normal search time required by workers with  marketable skills who are changing jobs, initially entering the labour force or re-entering the labour force.

2.   Cyclical - caused by lack of jobs during a recession.

3. Structural -  caused by a mismatch of the skills of workers out of work and the skills required for existing job opportunities.
a. New product
b. New technology
c. Relocation of Business Operations
d. Change in Taste & Preferences
e. Change in Government Policies

4. Seasonal Unemployment - caused by change in type of weather or season in a particular country or culture.
Eg. Lion dance dancers will only be hired during the beginning of each year during Chinese New Year in Singapore.

With the recent increase in unemployment rate, people in Singapore are worried on how much more will the unemployment rate rise.

From an article, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-s-unemployment-rate-how-much-higher-could-it-rise-8818602

It states, "Unlike previous economic downturns where jobs were hard to come by, there remain employers in Singapore that struggle to fill positions, such as those in the burgeoning IT industry. This boils down to unrelenting technological developments that have widened the gap between the skill sets that workers have and the ones that employers want."

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong states "other developed countries are seeing much higher unemployment of between 5 to 10 per cent, and as Singapore grapples with similar pressures as these mature economies, the overall unemployment rate stood at 2.3 percent in March 2017.This means that Singapore's unemployment rate is  projected to rise in the future.Hence, more concern might have to be placed on the development of technology rather than the rate of unemployment for the meantime.As Singapore wrestles with slower economic growth and disruptive technological changes, challenges have emerged in the local labour market.

In his annual May Day speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted that unemployment increased last year and even with better growth in 2017, the Government expects a "steady trickle of redundancies" as the economy continues to restructure.Ageing workforce, technological changes and a global economy that has yet to completely shake off the ills of the 2008 global financial crisis are the problems that the economy is facing.

It is impossible to have minimal or zero unemployment,as stated by economists.“In any healthy economy, there will always be people switching jobs or graduates joining the labour force so there will always be some degree of frictional unemployment,” explained Nomura economist Brian Tan. “This in itself is not a problem… because it is impossible to have a zero per cent unemployment rate, which is a common misperception.”

In addition, cyclical downturns or shifts in industries which render jobs and skills obsolete will also lead to structural unemployment, which is caused by a mismatch in the skills of a worker and those required by an employer.

Unemployment in Singapore remains relatively low by international standards and that boils down to reasons such as having a small and educated workforce, as well as extensive planning by the Government to ensure the economy stays on the right track, according to economists.In order to stay relevant,singapore has attracted foreign companies in order to invest in singapore's economy.

By attracting cheap foreign labour,they act as an unemployment buffer for singapore,thus ensuring that unemployment rates do not plummet into dangerous levels.

"In developed countries, the proportion of foreign workers is much lower, and many foreigners are also entitled to stay on in the country without work, unlike Singapore. So when people lose their jobs, they become unemployment statistics. (But) in Singapore, all non-Singaporeans who lose their jobs just go home.”
Economists that Channel NewsAsia spoke to do not think that unemployment will return to the levels of 3.3 per cent and 4.8 per cent, last seen during the 2008 global financial crisis and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003, respectively.

"We are not in an outright recession here and there's no financial crisis brewing in the horizon so there's no reason to be too pessimistic or expect a sharp spike in the near-term unemployment rate," said OCBC Bank's treasury research and strategy head Selena Ling, who expects jobless figures to stabilise around 2.5 per cent this year.

The 1997/1998 Asian financial crisis, the dotcom bust in 2001, the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the global financial crisis in 2008, cause companies to be too afraid to hire more workers due to rising cost of wages.

Still, worries linger ahead even as recent data portray a rosier growth outlook for Singapore.

Thanks largely to an export-led rebound in the manufacturing sector, which makes up one-fifth of the economy, Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP) picked up speed in the last quarter of 2016 and the positive momentum has since extended into the first three months of 2017.

As the turnaround appears limited to just the electronics and biomedical manufacturing clusters, economists call this "uneven recovery" of the economy.

Despite only one sector of the economy doing well, economists believe that the economy will continue to weaken, which is the manufacturing sector.This is because the recent pick-up in GDP is driven by certain segments within manufacturing but if you look beyond that, other parts of the economy are not doing well."

The bulk of employment growth remains driven primarily by the services sector. "Manufacturing has not been creating net jobs so the contribution to growth over the past few months may not translate into an uptick in labour demand."

"The challenges faced by the labour market are not just about decreasing job creation and rising lay-offs due to a slower economy. Instead, a bigger worry looms in the form of structural unemployment." experts said.

"We shouldn't discount the bigger issue of industry and technological change. When entire industries change, jobs get automated and become obsolete," said Mr Tan.

"We are starting to see rising structural unemployment, especially among the higher-skilled older PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians). They have become so specialised that if the industry goes downhill and they lose their jobs, they are in trouble because their skill sets are not transferable," he added.

On multiple occasions,the government has expressed its concerns about growing mismatches between jobs and the skills of the labour force. Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say mentioned  "A shortage of skills is likely to be the catalyst for higher unemployment in the future, rather than a lack of jobs."
After all, the speed of which Singapore restructures its industries to stay competitive and the ability of its workers to develop new skills to stay relevant is of paramount importance in the employability of the people in the labour force.