Retirement age for Singapore workers to go up from 63 to 64 on 1 July 2026, re-employment age to also rise from 68 to 69
Rise in retirement and re-employment ages is due to longer life expectancy, and can also help to address lack of manpower
Chia Han Keong
·Editor
Mon, 4 March 2024 at 2:36 am GMT-8
Singapore workers during the lunch break at Raffles Place. (PHOTO: Roslan Rahman/AFP)
SINGAPORE — Singapore will raise its workers' retirement age from 63 to 64 on 1 July 2026, with the re-employment age likewise going up from 68 to 69.
This means that workers who want to work longer will have longer statutory protection until the age of 64, while companies must offer eligible staff re-employment until 69, on adjusted terms if necessary.
CPF withdrawal and payout ages are not affected by these changes.
Minister of State for Manpower Gan Siow Huang announced the timeline during his ministry's Committee of Supply budget debate in Parliament on Monday (4 March). She added that the move was reached with consensus among the tripartite grouping of his ministry, unions and employers.
The retirement and re-employment age ceilings were last raised in 2022, after the government said in 2019 that the retirement age would be raised to 65 and the re-employment age to 70 by 2030.
The rise in retirement and re-employment ages is due to longer life expectancy. The change can also help to address the lack of manpower.
During her Parliament speech, Gan said that some companies may need to adjust their manpower and upskilling plans to retain their senior workers.
“Over nine in 10 senior workers who were eligible and wished to continue working were offered re-employment in 2023. To ensure that the next increase is implemented just as smoothly, I encourage employers to start planning early,” she said.
Higher salary support caps for Career Conversion Programmes
To help mature or long-term unemployed workers, the Ministry of Manpower announced higher salary support caps for Workforce Singapore’s Career Conversion Programmes from 1 April, up from S$6,000 to S$7,000 per month.Funding for other workers can go up to S$5,000 a month, compared with S$4,000 currently. The funding rates remain at up to 70 per cent of the worker’s monthly salary for citizens and permanent residents below the age of 40, and 90 per cent for the mature and long-term unemployed workers.
Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng said the Career Conversion Programme for existing workers in a company will be expanded beyond re-skilling for those in jobs at risk of redundancy.
"We will support employers who are proactively re-skilling existing workers to take on new growth job roles,” he said.
