https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/g...oreign-talent-aspirations-singaporean-workers
singapore
Some common ground appears to be emerging among the three main parties on the contentious issue.
PHOTO: The Straits Times
PUBLISHED ON April 05, 2025 9:28 AMByTay Hong Yi
The topic remains hotly debated, with the last five years marked by sea changes to the Republic’s foreign talent framework, accompanied by measures to lift the local workforce.
Singapore must remain open to the world to stay competitive and support the needs of society, said Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng in the debate over the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) latest budget in March.
Today, foreign-owned firms make up around 20 per cent of firms here and employ 60 per cent of Singapore residents in high-earning jobs that pay over $12,500 in gross monthly salary.
To the PAP government, the figures underscore the importance of attracting foreign investments and the global talent that follows such investments, in a way that complements local resident workforce growth and creates good jobs for Singaporeans.
But in a shift in recent years, it has also more pointedly recognised the anxieties Singaporeans have towards competition from the foreign workforce, and the benefits that accrue to locals.
In the current term of government that began in August 2020, the PAP has sought to make the foreign and local workforce more complementary to each other.
Measures were rolled out or tweaked to spur employers to be more judicious and hire foreigners with skills that firms truly needed, while also encouraging businesses to rework their processes to create more and better jobs for Singaporeans.
Support for upskilling and overseas exposure was also beefed up to prepare more Singaporeans to take on better jobs, including top leadership roles.
Chief among the slew of measures was the Complementarity Assessment Framework (Compass), which was introduced in Budget 2022 and gradually rolled out from September 2023.
Compass is a points-based framework that evaluates the attributes of an Employment Pass applicant and the prospective employer in deciding whether to issue the pass.
Bonus points are given to jobs on a Shortage Occupation List, and to firms that partner the Government on ambitious innovation and internationalisation activities.
During the latest debate over MOM’s budget, Dr Tan said early results for Compass showed a decline in the proportion of employers that are more dependent on foreigners.
The move was to have the new thresholds reflect a higher skills level, and peg them to what local associate professionals and technicians in the top one-third of their income distribution minimally earn.
The minimum qualifying salary for an EP was similarly revised to be pegged to what the top one-third of local professionals, managers, executives and technicians minimally earn.
Various changes were also made to work permit quotas to drive employers in labour-intensive fields to automate and reduce their reliance on menial labour.
On a more fundamental level, the PAP has rejected making distinctions between local-born Singaporeans, naturalised Singaporeans and permanent residents in key labour statistics, which it said undermined social cohesion.
Speaking during the debate over MOM’s budget in 2023, Dr Tan also said the Fair Consideration Framework would be enshrined in law as part of Singapore’s upcoming workplace fairness legislation.
Under the framework, launched in 2014, employers submitting EP or S Pass applications must first advertise on the Government’s MyCareersFuture portal and fairly consider all candidates.
Major skills training moves such as the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme and SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support scheme are, meanwhile, aimed at helping Singaporeans commit to in-depth training to qualify for better jobs.
Skills transfer and job displacement are two key areas that the Workers’ Party has sought to have more safeguards and measurements of.
https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/t...-tissue-seller-claims-foreigners-are-stealing
In a 2021 speech, then Aljunied GRC MP Leon Perera said one source of the anxiety surrounding the foreign workforce for Singaporeans is the sense that the pathways for them to learn skills from foreign talents and advance are poor.
He proposed that fixed-term EPs be issued, which can be renewed only when firms can prove that Singaporean workers in the company or in the industry had benefited from skills upgrading through the EP holder.
Meanwhile, Sengkang MP He Ting Ru said the benefits of the Republic’s foreign manpower policy tend to accrue more generally, and are less directly experienced by individuals.
The authorities must understand that the lived reality on the ground could be very different, and should pay attention to whether such views reveal potential blind spots in the implementation of its policies, she added.
They were both speaking in a debate about Singapore’s foreign talent policy in September 2021.
In recent years, Sengkang GRC MP Jamus Lim has flagged the concern that foreign professionals, who do not make Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions, could outcompete Singaporeans for a job.
He said such workers could take up a role at a lower gross salary than Singaporeans without these contributions, and proposed as a solution holding in escrow an amount equivalent to the contributions needed for local workers.
The WP had previously called for zero foreign manpower growth, contingent on Singapore achieving a one per cent annual growth in the resident workforce, but this did not feature in its party manifesto for GE2020.
Instead, the latest manifesto cautioned against an overdependence on low-cost foreign labour, without making specific policy prescriptions.
Like the WP, the PSP has called for the tracking of skills-related underemployment, in which professionals are overqualified for their jobs, and has called it "a real problem for Singaporeans".
Non-Constituency MP Leong Mun Wai suggested in the latest debate over MOM’s budget that the ministry could track Singaporeans who took pay cuts, no longer have the same seniority in their jobs, or those involuntarily employed as contract or part-time workers.
Leong also wanted to know how many resident PMETs were displaced by work pass holders who took up permanent residency.
The party has also consistently sought for key labour statistics to be further broken down by citizenship status, such as for job creation numbers.
These numbers are typically only reported for residents, comprising Singaporeans and permanent residents, and foreigners.
Leong said greater transparency would help soothe Singaporeans’ anxieties on being displaced by a foreign workforce.
https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/m...ermit-holders-lifted-employment-age-raised-63
In a 2023 speech, Leong also said MOM should consider imposing diversity quotas, or limits on the total percentage of a company’s workforce that may be from a certain foreign nationality, which he argued would provide a stronger safeguard than the Compass framework.
Small and medium-sized enterprises that employ fewer than 25 employees should also not be exempt from workplace fairness legislation, which prohibits discrimination on various fronts including nationality.
Leong said the exemption could presumably allow larger companies to set up subsidiaries that employ one local and 24 foreign PMETs.
The PSP has also sought a $1,200 monthly levy on EP holders, for whom levies are currently not required.
Such a move, Leong said, will level the playing field for Singaporean professionals in the light of the CPF contributions needed for locals, especially with the CPF salary ceiling being raised in steps towards $8,000 by 2026, as announced in 2023.
The number of residents aged 20 to 64 for each resident aged 65 and above has nearly halved from six in 2014 to 3.5 in 2024.
This old-age support ratio provides a rough indication of the number of people "who are potentially economically and socially supporting elderly people," MOM had said in November 2024.
In March, Dr Tan noted the decline is blunted if one includes foreign workers, yielding a ratio of 5.2 in 2024.
Still, he acknowledged that there are limits to pushing up workforce numbers, as compared to increasing productivity, to keep the economy growing.
In recent years, the PAP government has occasionally responded to calls for more data by the opposition with data points to show that the resident workforce, and in particular, Singaporean workers, benefit from remaining open to foreign firms and the foreign workforce they need.
For instance, in March, Dr Tan disclosed that locally born Singapore citizens made up 63 per cent of the growth in the number of residents with PMET jobs from 2014 to 2024.
These moves depart from the PAP’s previous stance of not issuing such data, so as not to create an us-versus-them mentality between citizens and permanent residents, who both contribute to Singapore.
In an interview with The Economist in May 2024, days ahead of his accession to the prime ministership, then DPM Wong pledged that citizens will not become a minority here even as Singapore continues to welcome foreign professionals in a controlled manner.
Asked if pursuing higher complementarity could drive up the risk of companies moving roles or even entire business lines out of Singapore, Associate Professor Walter Theseira of the Singapore University of Social Sciences said all countries impose some regulations on foreign employment.
They do so to gain the benefits of access to global talent, like relieving manpower shortages, while managing local employment outcomes, he said.
"The balance on this depends on the extent to which the country needs foreign employment."
Singapore’s high quality of life for well-paid expatriates and the global top jobs available here would remain a draw even if policies were tightened, he added.
He added that due to high costs and limited space, not every industry or job can be accommodated in Singapore.
"What we want is to accommodate the higher value added ones, and offshoring actually does bring benefits as well, in terms of (access to) business services at lower cost for our economy."
On why Singapore can have such a robust education system but still require foreign professionals, Prof Theseira said increases in demand in specific high-skilled areas, such as technology services, can outpace the growth in the talent pool.
He said top global cities have a hinterland to draw more talents from, unlike a city-state like Singapore.
"Our problem is that our city equals our country, so if we limited ourselves this way, we would be competing with both hands tied behind our back."
Independent political observer Felix Tan said Singapore’s tertiary education system may be robust, but graduates will not have the same global experience as the foreign professionals entering the country to contribute to its economy.
“In addition, fewer Singapore companies have managed to have a global foothold.
"So, despite the fact that Singapore’s education system is top-notch, it does not necessarily guarantee that (Singaporeans) have the appropriate skill sets and global experiences that will be suitable for the job," Dr Felix Tan said.
Sandip Kaur Bhandal, global employer services partner at Deloitte Singapore, said the need for foreign talent arises from Singapore’s position as a global hub for multinationals.
"It has many multinational corporations, which may require increased knowledge and expertise from other international markets.
"The diverse perspectives that foreign professionals offer can enhance problem-solving and decision-making processes within the local workforce."
Dr Felix Tan said there seems to be a "repositioning of the rhetoric" on the need for foreign labour by the opposition parties, compared to their earlier stance on how tightly Singapore needs to control the inflow.
This could be them recognising that Singapore can ill-afford to stem the inflow of foreigners into the country if it wants to continue to sustain itself in the global economy, he added.
Policy expert Terence Ho underscored the importance of providing firms with sufficient impetus to invest in local workers, and not simply fall back on a "plug-and-play" approach and default to foreign hires.
This is why recent moves to tighten foreign workforce policies are necessary, even if they do make it somewhat harder for employers to access foreign manpower, he said.
On the flip side, Dr Gillian Koh at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy said that when political parties propose alternatives, they need to work out, "part by part", how they would provide the manpower, and in sufficient numbers, that Singapore needs.
These proposals will need to recognise that limiting access to manpower raises the cost of labour, and in turn, the cost of doing business, she said. It also puts a limit on growing to scale or moving into newer, higher-value activities.
Political parties should lay out the available choices rationally and establish "the price that Singaporean voters are willing to pay for their politics and values," Dr Koh added.
singapore
GE2025: Balancing need for foreign talent with aspirations of Singaporean workers
Some common ground appears to be emerging among the three main parties on the contentious issue.
PHOTO: The Straits Times
PUBLISHED ON April 05, 2025 9:28 AMByTay Hong Yi
The topic remains hotly debated, with the last five years marked by sea changes to the Republic’s foreign talent framework, accompanied by measures to lift the local workforce.
Singapore must remain open to the world to stay competitive and support the needs of society, said Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng in the debate over the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) latest budget in March.
Today, foreign-owned firms make up around 20 per cent of firms here and employ 60 per cent of Singapore residents in high-earning jobs that pay over $12,500 in gross monthly salary.
To the PAP government, the figures underscore the importance of attracting foreign investments and the global talent that follows such investments, in a way that complements local resident workforce growth and creates good jobs for Singaporeans.
But in a shift in recent years, it has also more pointedly recognised the anxieties Singaporeans have towards competition from the foreign workforce, and the benefits that accrue to locals.
In the current term of government that began in August 2020, the PAP has sought to make the foreign and local workforce more complementary to each other.
Measures were rolled out or tweaked to spur employers to be more judicious and hire foreigners with skills that firms truly needed, while also encouraging businesses to rework their processes to create more and better jobs for Singaporeans.
Support for upskilling and overseas exposure was also beefed up to prepare more Singaporeans to take on better jobs, including top leadership roles.
Chief among the slew of measures was the Complementarity Assessment Framework (Compass), which was introduced in Budget 2022 and gradually rolled out from September 2023.
Compass is a points-based framework that evaluates the attributes of an Employment Pass applicant and the prospective employer in deciding whether to issue the pass.
Bonus points are given to jobs on a Shortage Occupation List, and to firms that partner the Government on ambitious innovation and internationalisation activities.
During the latest debate over MOM’s budget, Dr Tan said early results for Compass showed a decline in the proportion of employers that are more dependent on foreigners.
Tighter entry requirements, fairer competition
In 2022, increases to the S Pass minimum qualifying salary and levy were also announced.The move was to have the new thresholds reflect a higher skills level, and peg them to what local associate professionals and technicians in the top one-third of their income distribution minimally earn.
The minimum qualifying salary for an EP was similarly revised to be pegged to what the top one-third of local professionals, managers, executives and technicians minimally earn.
Various changes were also made to work permit quotas to drive employers in labour-intensive fields to automate and reduce their reliance on menial labour.
On a more fundamental level, the PAP has rejected making distinctions between local-born Singaporeans, naturalised Singaporeans and permanent residents in key labour statistics, which it said undermined social cohesion.
Speaking during the debate over MOM’s budget in 2023, Dr Tan also said the Fair Consideration Framework would be enshrined in law as part of Singapore’s upcoming workplace fairness legislation.
Under the framework, launched in 2014, employers submitting EP or S Pass applications must first advertise on the Government’s MyCareersFuture portal and fairly consider all candidates.
Major skills training moves such as the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme and SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support scheme are, meanwhile, aimed at helping Singaporeans commit to in-depth training to qualify for better jobs.
Skills transfer and job displacement are two key areas that the Workers’ Party has sought to have more safeguards and measurements of.
https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/t...-tissue-seller-claims-foreigners-are-stealing
In a 2021 speech, then Aljunied GRC MP Leon Perera said one source of the anxiety surrounding the foreign workforce for Singaporeans is the sense that the pathways for them to learn skills from foreign talents and advance are poor.
He proposed that fixed-term EPs be issued, which can be renewed only when firms can prove that Singaporean workers in the company or in the industry had benefited from skills upgrading through the EP holder.
Meanwhile, Sengkang MP He Ting Ru said the benefits of the Republic’s foreign manpower policy tend to accrue more generally, and are less directly experienced by individuals.
The authorities must understand that the lived reality on the ground could be very different, and should pay attention to whether such views reveal potential blind spots in the implementation of its policies, she added.
They were both speaking in a debate about Singapore’s foreign talent policy in September 2021.
Calls to track underemployment, job displacement
In the same debate, Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh reiterated a call by Aljunied GRC MP Sylvia Lim to develop metrics for skills-related underemployment and to publish the data.In recent years, Sengkang GRC MP Jamus Lim has flagged the concern that foreign professionals, who do not make Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions, could outcompete Singaporeans for a job.
He said such workers could take up a role at a lower gross salary than Singaporeans without these contributions, and proposed as a solution holding in escrow an amount equivalent to the contributions needed for local workers.
The WP had previously called for zero foreign manpower growth, contingent on Singapore achieving a one per cent annual growth in the resident workforce, but this did not feature in its party manifesto for GE2020.
Instead, the latest manifesto cautioned against an overdependence on low-cost foreign labour, without making specific policy prescriptions.
Like the WP, the PSP has called for the tracking of skills-related underemployment, in which professionals are overqualified for their jobs, and has called it "a real problem for Singaporeans".
Non-Constituency MP Leong Mun Wai suggested in the latest debate over MOM’s budget that the ministry could track Singaporeans who took pay cuts, no longer have the same seniority in their jobs, or those involuntarily employed as contract or part-time workers.
Leong also wanted to know how many resident PMETs were displaced by work pass holders who took up permanent residency.
The party has also consistently sought for key labour statistics to be further broken down by citizenship status, such as for job creation numbers.
These numbers are typically only reported for residents, comprising Singaporeans and permanent residents, and foreigners.
Leong said greater transparency would help soothe Singaporeans’ anxieties on being displaced by a foreign workforce.
https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/m...ermit-holders-lifted-employment-age-raised-63
In a 2023 speech, Leong also said MOM should consider imposing diversity quotas, or limits on the total percentage of a company’s workforce that may be from a certain foreign nationality, which he argued would provide a stronger safeguard than the Compass framework.
Small and medium-sized enterprises that employ fewer than 25 employees should also not be exempt from workplace fairness legislation, which prohibits discrimination on various fronts including nationality.
Leong said the exemption could presumably allow larger companies to set up subsidiaries that employ one local and 24 foreign PMETs.
The PSP has also sought a $1,200 monthly levy on EP holders, for whom levies are currently not required.
Such a move, Leong said, will level the playing field for Singaporean professionals in the light of the CPF contributions needed for locals, especially with the CPF salary ceiling being raised in steps towards $8,000 by 2026, as announced in 2023.
Foreigners contribute, expand tax base
Beyond skills needs, the Government has also highlighted the role of foreign workers not just to meet skills needs, but also to widen the tax base to help residents fund social spending.The number of residents aged 20 to 64 for each resident aged 65 and above has nearly halved from six in 2014 to 3.5 in 2024.
This old-age support ratio provides a rough indication of the number of people "who are potentially economically and socially supporting elderly people," MOM had said in November 2024.
In March, Dr Tan noted the decline is blunted if one includes foreign workers, yielding a ratio of 5.2 in 2024.
Still, he acknowledged that there are limits to pushing up workforce numbers, as compared to increasing productivity, to keep the economy growing.
In recent years, the PAP government has occasionally responded to calls for more data by the opposition with data points to show that the resident workforce, and in particular, Singaporean workers, benefit from remaining open to foreign firms and the foreign workforce they need.
For instance, in March, Dr Tan disclosed that locally born Singapore citizens made up 63 per cent of the growth in the number of residents with PMET jobs from 2014 to 2024.
These moves depart from the PAP’s previous stance of not issuing such data, so as not to create an us-versus-them mentality between citizens and permanent residents, who both contribute to Singapore.
In an interview with The Economist in May 2024, days ahead of his accession to the prime ministership, then DPM Wong pledged that citizens will not become a minority here even as Singapore continues to welcome foreign professionals in a controlled manner.
Asked if pursuing higher complementarity could drive up the risk of companies moving roles or even entire business lines out of Singapore, Associate Professor Walter Theseira of the Singapore University of Social Sciences said all countries impose some regulations on foreign employment.
They do so to gain the benefits of access to global talent, like relieving manpower shortages, while managing local employment outcomes, he said.
"The balance on this depends on the extent to which the country needs foreign employment."
Singapore’s high quality of life for well-paid expatriates and the global top jobs available here would remain a draw even if policies were tightened, he added.
Overcoming city-state constraints
Conversely, said the labour economist, relaxing foreign workforce policies would not help much if career opportunities are perceived to be poor here.He added that due to high costs and limited space, not every industry or job can be accommodated in Singapore.
"What we want is to accommodate the higher value added ones, and offshoring actually does bring benefits as well, in terms of (access to) business services at lower cost for our economy."
On why Singapore can have such a robust education system but still require foreign professionals, Prof Theseira said increases in demand in specific high-skilled areas, such as technology services, can outpace the growth in the talent pool.
He said top global cities have a hinterland to draw more talents from, unlike a city-state like Singapore.
"Our problem is that our city equals our country, so if we limited ourselves this way, we would be competing with both hands tied behind our back."
Independent political observer Felix Tan said Singapore’s tertiary education system may be robust, but graduates will not have the same global experience as the foreign professionals entering the country to contribute to its economy.
“In addition, fewer Singapore companies have managed to have a global foothold.
"So, despite the fact that Singapore’s education system is top-notch, it does not necessarily guarantee that (Singaporeans) have the appropriate skill sets and global experiences that will be suitable for the job," Dr Felix Tan said.
Sandip Kaur Bhandal, global employer services partner at Deloitte Singapore, said the need for foreign talent arises from Singapore’s position as a global hub for multinationals.
"It has many multinational corporations, which may require increased knowledge and expertise from other international markets.
"The diverse perspectives that foreign professionals offer can enhance problem-solving and decision-making processes within the local workforce."
Dr Felix Tan said there seems to be a "repositioning of the rhetoric" on the need for foreign labour by the opposition parties, compared to their earlier stance on how tightly Singapore needs to control the inflow.
This could be them recognising that Singapore can ill-afford to stem the inflow of foreigners into the country if it wants to continue to sustain itself in the global economy, he added.
Policy expert Terence Ho underscored the importance of providing firms with sufficient impetus to invest in local workers, and not simply fall back on a "plug-and-play" approach and default to foreign hires.
This is why recent moves to tighten foreign workforce policies are necessary, even if they do make it somewhat harder for employers to access foreign manpower, he said.
On the flip side, Dr Gillian Koh at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy said that when political parties propose alternatives, they need to work out, "part by part", how they would provide the manpower, and in sufficient numbers, that Singapore needs.
These proposals will need to recognise that limiting access to manpower raises the cost of labour, and in turn, the cost of doing business, she said. It also puts a limit on growing to scale or moving into newer, higher-value activities.
Political parties should lay out the available choices rationally and establish "the price that Singaporean voters are willing to pay for their politics and values," Dr Koh added.
