Singapore's global hub ambitions: A Compass to guide the workforce

WITH both China and the US projected to grow at a more muted pace in the coming decade, South-east Asia (SEA) is being heralded as the next driver of global economic growth, with a 5.1 per cent gross domestic product (GDP) increase forecast for this year alone. Global multinational companies like Amazon Web Services, Meta, Apple, Google, and Chinese tech companies like Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba have all identified SEA as key to their international expansion ambitions, eyeing growth markets such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Given our gateway positioning, Singapore has risen with the tide and benefited from an inflow of quality foreign investment and talent, although the trade-offs have been hotly debated, especially in recent years.

In October 2021, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng mentioned that more than a quarter of job vacancies in Singapore have been left unfilled for 6 months or more. Amid this tight labour market, most Singaporeans would agree that remaining open to foreign talent is key to our longer-term survival. However, while allowing the entry of skilled foreign talent makes rational economic sense, it has also inadvertently led to the deepening of 2 overlapping societal fault lines in Singapore - one between the haves and have-nots; and another between Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans. When one hears of more and more tech and new-economy billionaires (often foreigners) buying multi-million-dollar homes in Singapore, one cannot help but wonder if locals are being disadvantaged.

Against this backdrop, the government has been sharpening Singapore's foreign manpower policies, from raising Employment Pass (EP) salary requirements to a more recent announcement of a new scoring system: Compass.