Budget 2026: How should Singapore decide which jobs are to be filled by foreign workers?

[SINGAPORE] Inclusivity – including diverse pathways to success – was one of three priorities laid out by Manpower Minister Tan See Leng during the debate on his ministry’s budget in Parliament this week.

In the same speech, however, were policy tweaks that make it easier to hire foreigners for “roles with not enough locals”, as Dr Tan put it.

Amid ongoing efforts to broaden the concept of a “good job”, the government seems to view some roles as unlikely to be attractive enough to citizens.

The question, then, is how Singapore decides which jobs are worth encouraging locals to take up, and which should be left to foreign workers.

One of seven recommendations in the Economic Strategy Review mid-term update in January was to “broaden the range of good jobs across the economy”.

This effort includes transforming jobs in areas that “may be more resilient to global shifts”, from skilled trades such as technicians, to care and social services.

This theme was taken up on Tuesday (Mar 3). While career success used to be narrowly defined, there is growing awareness that every profession deserves recognition and respect, said Dr Tan.

He added that – as Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has also said – inclusive growth is partly about creating good jobs in domestic and essential services.

The government is working to raise pay and progression in the education, healthcare, and social service sectors, as well as in the skilled trades.

Many such trades will remain essential in the future economy, and are resilient or even complementary to the rise of artificial intelligence, said Dr Tan, citing electrical work as an example.

The government is thus working to encourage Singaporeans to enter such trades, starting with a pilot to uplift the electrical trade.

Every job a good job?

Another ongoing effort is improving the pay of lower-wage workers. This includes moves such as raising the local qualifying salary – the minimum that local employees must be paid if their employer wants to hire foreigners.

Dr Tan acknowledged that such policies add to business costs, but said they serve the important social objective of inclusive growth.

The key to achieving sustainable wage gains is improving productivity, he said, citing the Singapore Productivity Centre’s Food Services Productivity report in particular.

Yet, food services and social services are two sectors that will get greater foreign worker flexibility. In September, they will see the most additions to the Non-Traditional Sources (NTS) Occupation List.

Ordinarily, companies in manufacturing and services can hire work permit holders from only Malaysia, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan. The NTS Occupation List sets out roles for which work permit holders can be hired from other countries.

With S Pass qualifying salaries being raised, the expansion of the NTS Occupation List means that workers who may not meet the higher S Pass salaries can be kept on work permits instead.

Of eight new roles to be added, half are in food services: butchers, fishmongers, and related food preparers; food/drink stall assistants; kitchen assistants; and waiters. Cooks are already on the list.

Three new roles are in social services: babysitters or infant care-givers; educarers; and teacher aides. The last new role is that of cabin attendant.

This move will undoubtedly provide some relief to companies, particularly those with thin margins. It is a practical recognition of employers’ challenges.

At the same time, however, it could look like a ceding of ground.

As Dr Tan put it, MOM provides “targeted foreign manpower flexibilities” for “essential or strategic areas with “limited scope for automation or localisation”.

If a role is on the NTS Occupation List, that implies that it cannot draw enough workers from traditional sources such as Malaysia or China. One might expect it to be even harder to get Singaporeans to fill such roles.

Is a role’s presence on the list, therefore, an admission that its pay, working conditions or prestige simply cannot be raised sufficiently to make it attractive to locals?

That might not necessarily be the case. Foreign manpower flexibilities may serve as a bridging mechanism, given that some industries may need more time to raise productivity.

Still, one danger is that when an occupation is seen as having limited scope for localisation, that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Government policies that facilitate the hiring of foreign workers for such roles may reduce the need for employers to improve pay or conditions.

With the government also taking a greater role in providing career guidance, its priorities may be able to shape workers’ choice of industries more than ever before.

The merger of SkillsFuture Singapore and Workforce Singapore, for instance, aims to provide a single touchpoint for training, career guidance and job opportunities. But this also means it can play an outsize role in shaping such decisions.

Similarly, the Career Health SG initiative has tools such as CareersFinder to help workers discover lesser-known job options. Here, too, the universe of possible jobs is a curated one.

One hopes that even as the government alleviates employers’ labour-crunch woes with targeted flexibility, it will continue to encourage improvements to every job, and allow for the possibility that some Singaporeans will be willing to take up such roles.