Economic Strategy Review: What makes a ‘good job’ today – and why this is harder to create

[SINGAPORE] Good jobs are still defined by pay, stability and progression, but creating such roles – and making them accessible – has become increasingly difficult, labour observers say.

The issue has come into sharper focus after the Economic Strategy Review (ESR) committee warned on Friday (Jan 30) that economic growth no longer automatically translates into job creation, prompting a rethink of what constitutes a “good job”, including in skilled and technical roles.

Associate Professor Walter Theseira, a labour economist at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), said the core ingredients of a good job – decent pay, stability and progression – have not fundamentally changed, even as younger workers are often portrayed as seeking something different such as greater flexibility or a stronger sense of purpose.

The problem, however, is that while the idea of a good job has remained broadly consistent, the pathways to achieving one have become less predictable, he added.

To illustrate, he pointed to the 1970s and 1980s, when Singapore’s export-oriented industrialisation strategy provided more predictable pathways from education to employment across different skill levels, even amid restructuring.

“I think what is giving people a lot of pause is that they basically see that a lot of the pathways that people followed in the past, for example in education and work... don’t actually lead to the same result as reliably,” he said.

Such concerns have surfaced most visibly among younger workers. 

While Ministry of Manpower (MOM) data released in November found “no sustained shift towards shorter-term roles among younger workers”, fresh graduate employment has come under closer scrutiny amid anecdotal reports of a more challenging hiring environment.

Rethinking job quality

As traditional pathways become less reliable, attention has turned to how jobs are designed and whether they support progression over time. 

Swechha Mohapatra, assistant director for workplace transformation at the Institute for Human Resource Professionals, said a good job is increasingly defined by whether it is sustainable and future-facing – offering manageable workloads, some autonomy over how work is done, and opportunities to build skills that remain relevant over time.

Priorities also vary across demographics, she added, with early-career workers tending to value learning speed and mobility, while mid-career and older workers place greater weight on stability, health and predictability.

She said: “As the ESR underscores, job quality does not emerge automatically from growth – it has to be intentionally designed with long-term career health in mind.” 

Reflecting this shift, the government has stepped up efforts to nudge employers towards longer-term career development. 

In October, MOM launched the Singapore Opportunity Index with think-tank The Burning Glass Institute and SUSS, to provide a clearer picture of career progression, inclusiveness and competitiveness in the labour market.

The index assesses employers across five workforce outcomes – progression, pay, hiring, retention and gender parity. 

Speaking at the January unveiling of an inaugural list of 300 companies that made it to the index, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said being recognised signals that an organisation “delivers real opportunity and real growth” for workers.

Still, much of the conversation around what constitutes a “good job” remains centred on high-value, tech-driven or white-collar roles, said Dr Faizal Yahya, a senior research fellow in the governance and economy department at the Institute of Policy Studies.

Dr Faizal, whose research interests include human capital, added that policies promoting high-skill, high-value jobs risk creating a skills gap, where qualified individuals struggle to find suitable employment even as vacancies go unfilled because they require specialised skills that the current workforce lacks.

To bridge these gaps, he said, employers may turn more heavily to importing high-skilled foreign labour – a reliance that can, in turn, dampen wage growth for local workers at entry and mid-levels, and weaken incentives for firms to invest in developing local talent.

This tension is sharpened by the government’s push to position Singapore as a leader in artificial intelligence (AI), one of the ESR’s seven recommendations.

While technological advances can create new, higher-quality roles, they also impose “significant, immediate, and potentially structural constraints on the total number of these jobs”, said Dr Faizal.

“Automation disproportionately replaces routine, middle-skill tasks such as administrative and production work, while increasing demand for high-skill, cognitive roles in areas like technology and management, as well as lower-skill, non-routine work such as care and manual services,” he said.

In some cases, automation has led to sharp reductions in manpower, even as companies become more productive. 

At agritech firm Greenphyto, for example, BT reported that automation has reduced manpower needs to about one-fifth of what would be required under conventional farming methods.

In other sectors, the effect has been more neutral. At cable manufacturing company Keystone Cable, its director Derek Zhu told BT that automation reduced the need for certain operator roles but was largely offset by the creation of production engineering positions, resulting in little net change in headcount.

Before the shift, Zhu said, the company struggled to attract Singaporeans to a “niche” industry as machine operators.

The production engineering roles, however, involve data analytics and production management, with engineers leading individual projects and seeing them through from ideation to application – a scope that has given the roles a stronger sense of ownership and fulfilment, added Zhu.

Taken together, these contrasting outcomes highlight a broader constraint of automation-driven growth – while it can raise productivity and improve job quality in some roles, it does not reliably generate employment at scale.

Murray Sarelius, head of personal tax and global mobility services at KPMG in Singapore, said this could also lead to under-employment if workers are unable to access the skills demanded by a more digital, capital-intensive economy. 

As lower-value tasks are automated, the KPMG partner warned that some higher-skilled roles may increasingly become the baseline for employability, compressing or eroding mid-level pathways unless new specialised and technical roles are created in tandem.

“This emphasises the importance of the ESR’s call for a more intentional approach to creating high‑quality, skills‑based roles – and supporting workers to move into them,” he said.

Redefining a good job

These constraints have been acknowledged by the ESR, which recommended broadening the range of “good jobs” in the economy beyond growth sectors to include skilled trades such as technicians, as well as roles in care and social services.

The observers, however, cautioned that translating this into practice will not be straightforward.

Prof Theseira noted that in many high-income countries, skilled trades are able to command higher wages because labour supply is more tightly regulated. In Singapore, by contrast, extensive reliance on lower-wage foreign labour has kept costs – and wages – down.

He added that Singapore’s status-conscious consumption culture means jobs are often judged by whether they support a socially acceptable standard of living. 

“I think it’s a very hard sell for the government to talk about (redefining good jobs) without addressing wages,” he said.  

Remuneration aside, Sarelius suggested that employers need to redesign roles for human-AI augmentation, build skills‑based talent models and ensure workers at all levels can access continuous learning. 

He added that policymakers can support this by strengthening training and progression frameworks, and by helping smaller firms adapt, so that the benefits of technology are more widely shared across the economy.

“Most importantly, the transition must be human-centred,” he said. “By aligning job redesign, skills development and social protection, Singapore can ensure that rising productivity translates into rising opportunity – including in the skilled and technical roles that will underpin its next phase of growth.”

Beyond policy and labour market constraints, Dr Faizal also cautioned against how “good jobs” are increasingly framed in public discourse.

“The focus on finding a high-status ‘dream job’ can create undue pressure on workers,” he said. “There is a blind spot around the value of ‘good enough’ jobs that support a meaningful life outside work, when job satisfaction is framed too narrowly around professional success.”

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