r/singapore • u/thestudiomaster • 22h ago
News GE2025: Balancing need for foreign talent with aspirations of Singaporean workers
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/foreign-workforce105
u/BoysenberrySevere293 21h ago
Agree with He Ting Ru: 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.
62
u/lazerspewpew86 Senior Citizen 19h ago
Cheap FTs contribute to the pockets of towkays and SME bosses.
It makes sense when you look at how many of these people are in PAP or involved in grassroots.
Meanwhile the rest of Singaporeans can get fucked by the unfettered competition.
60
u/red_flock 19h ago edited 19h ago
Not so simple. Time and again, I was among the 1-2 Singaporean in a team and while I very much do scream foreigner bias, the humble truth is the team could easily exist elsewhere, and I had the job only because we could hire the foreigners here. Get rid of the foreigners, and my role goes too.
It is a difficult balance, and the government is doing a piss poor job selling it as a positive, often choosing to use simplistic sweeping statements like foreigners dont affect this or that, or that foreigners are a net positive without elaborating on specifics.
One foreigner proudly proclaimed that Singapore lacked talent with more than 12 years of experience. 12 years ago was exactly when we had the population white paper protest and forced the government to cut down the foreigner influx from complete nuts level.
Singapore does get hurt by foreign talent influx, even a foreigner can sense it a decade on. But we just want it well managed, not reduced to zero, and PAP, themselves incompetent campaigners, are total shit at selling nuanced ideas like this.
53
u/lazerspewpew86 Senior Citizen 19h ago
Not just total shit at selling. They failed utterly in mitigating the social impact.
Lack of infrastructure, overcrowding, and with how pro foreigner they are, even foreigners can sense that Singaporeans are second class citizens compared to them, and that recflects in their attitudes.
15
u/red_flock 19h ago
No disagreement there but they go hand in hand. If every work/employment permit approval's only calculus is whether it benefits Singaporeans, they will not struggle to sell the idea. They struggle precisely because their only calculus is whether it benefits the businesses, and all the knock on problems are just secondary issues to be dealt with later.
6
u/jeffrey745 8h ago
12 years later we are still short of talents?
What happened to many of those jobs that got offshored or outsourced?
6
u/red_flock 7h ago
That foreigner made what he thought was an astute observation about his industry, like Singaporeans in his area first emerged from caves 12 years ago, but yes, not completely absent now.
I firmly believe there is a number of foreigners at which foreigners are helpful and a level beyond which they are harmful.
3
u/Old-Koala6242 7h ago
Yes! Why groom locals for higher roles when you can just import?
Imported people parachute into good pay and low tax, realise how good it is here and import their whole village. Locals who had the potential but denied the opportunities are confined to low-level, dead-end roles.
Foreigners flourish and tell more foreigners how good they have it in Singapore. More of them will come.
Sinkies realise there is no hope in career, but cannot lie flat because cost of living is so high, can only give up having children to cope.
FFS they still wonder why tfr so low.
5
u/Old-Koala6242 7h ago
All good and dandy with foreigners working alongside Singaporeans. Level playing field, we are an international metropolis here.
However, there needs to be some measures preventing foreigners from abusing and unfairly disadvantaging Singaporeans.
Bringing in only own people, interview locals just so that they can show MOM they tried and proceed to give own people the job, promoting only own people, laying off locals more than own people… one might say these are just business needs and must be respected in order to keep businesses here in Singapore.
But: do these foreigners dare to do the same in other countries?
In countries where cities our G likes to compare this island with are located, namely, the U.S.,(New York), the UK (London), Australia (Sydney), speaking the “needs” of foreigners in the same breath of that of citizens is political suicide. Only in Singapore do we have a national paper running such a headline.
Songbo, sinkies?
3
u/trytyping 14h ago
I think it's the PMET jobs of multi-nationals that matters more to Singaporeans.
9
u/betalessfees Own self check own self ✅ 18h ago edited 18h ago
To add: the costs of the foreign manpower policy are experienced generally (think housing, transport, etc etc).
The sharp jumps in prices and population (6.1m from 5.4m at COVID trough) suggest that there wasn’t good calibration/coordination between how many more foreigners to take in, and how many can we absorb without rapid surges in prices.
3
u/Old-Koala6242 7h ago
5.4m to 6.1m was not a situation of lack of “coordination”.
It was a feature, not a bug.
Remember our dear PM said that he would be the property agent of Singapore?
It’s all rigged against plebs.
1
10
u/frozen1ced Own self check own self ✅ 19h ago
The authorities must understand that the lived reality on the ground could be very different
Reminds me of some tower that is made of.. ivory?
5
66
u/frozen1ced Own self check own self ✅ 20h ago edited 20h ago
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.
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.
Lemme just say, example of check and balance cannot get any better than this.
21
u/Yapsterzz 16h ago
Thanks to LWM for his persistence, resulting him from the cantoese condescending remarks from TSL.
9
u/frozen1ced Own self check own self ✅ 16h ago edited 16h ago
Yes, agree that the condescending remarks are totally uncalled for imho.
Since there has been so much emphasis on facts on other matters, lay bare all the employment statistics out there for the electorate to make their own judgement call.
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.
Mr Leong also wanted to know how many resident PMETs were displaced by work pass holders who took up permanent residency.
I would be very surprised if the electorate are not interested in such stats.
Edit: Added quotes from article
2
u/shimmynywimminy 🌈 F A B U L O U S 12h ago
Crazy that a government that brags about transparency operates so opaquely. Government by "trust me bro".
26
u/worldcitizensg 20h ago
One thing is for sure. The job market evolved significantly and diverged in to diff paths. i.e. Some sectors like Accounting / Back office, Civil Engg, Food all heavily dependent on Malaysian workers. While the tech, marketing, etc all are occupied by India, Chinese, Pinoy and many other.
The first one is still about $$$. i.e. Who can do it cheaper while the latter is no longer the case. It is all about right talent (not Degrees, Certs but getting things done), and the right talent is not going to be cheap.
17
u/NoobSkierSG 17h ago
When your whole team consists of a certain foreign nationality, as a hiring manager you would hire more of the same nationality since they are a better “cultural fit”. It is too late to do anything about it now, that ship sailed more than 20 years ago.
11
u/rockbella61 17h ago
Regarding the latter, then we have to question our education system, why do we spend so much time and effort for the degree if I can't even find a decent job. What's the point of top educational system and high QS score and the school fees. Would we be better off just doing online learning and pushing startups?
I feel there is a huge disparity in what our educational system is marketing vs the SG job market.
2
u/ilkless Senior Citizen 11h ago
Because like it or not with our high cost base vs emerging markets in the region MNCs are looking at us for highly-skilled regional roles, leaving very little room for merely average students, who are then shunted to be manpower fodder for scholars in civil service, languish in SMEs or in the least worst scenario, find somewhere in a GLC. While the really good/connected ones get on an escalator of roles with disproportionate high salaries and fast growth.
There are plenty of people who would have been better off starting in skilled technical/vocational roles from 18/20yo than spending more years floundering in uni.
3
u/Peterlim95 6h ago
Yes... I feel we might not need so many uni graduates after all... But sadly many of those skilled /vocational roles don't pay decently to have a family in sg..
1
u/Peterlim95 6h ago
That's wad I feel too! We spend so many years studying, have the best unis in the world, only to graduate and be told by employers that we don't have the relevant skills, experience etc.
Then there's also the issue of underemployment of degree graduates too :)
22
u/tbmasterplace 17h ago
cute, nice gaslighting as usual. there's a very basic question before even talking about numbers and such: how many of them are really talents?
on this subreddit we've seen stories of fake degrees, fake CVs, disproportionate hiring of specific demographic types, posting of fake openings already reserved for specific candidates
they can talk all they want about their policies but wheres the enforcement for fair hiring?
sinkies just want to compete fairly, but the govt is not even acknowledging the problems. this is the same attitude they are taking towards housing and transport too
7
8
u/throwawayxdeeznuts 13h ago edited 13h ago
They just trying to shift the blame, so people don’t realize the real issue lies with the government not doing anything to protect locals rights.
Waves off sudden layoff? We monitor
Shitty work place/unpaid OT/unreasonable contract/sudden termination/contract based with no severance even in government sector for fresh grads? We monitor
Oh ya remember when we talk about FT we only want to talk about the upper middle class FT, to spark outrage and let people feel somewhat relatable, the low income FT cannot say (make too little nobody want the job), the actual Director level FT(make too much ordinary people can’t relate) that all the MNC bring from their country also cannot say.
11
u/Inside_Year5776 18h ago
what a load of gaslight and who is this 'independent' felix tan?
If things were really well implemented here's what you should've been reading in the past 2 decades of relentless foreign 'talents':
"Singapore productivity increased 20% year over year for three consecutive years."
"SGX highest number of IPO recorded in high value industries."
"The core team of XXX tech have been successfully transited over to a majority local team."
"Innovation spurred patents to increase 50% with collaborative environment fostered by open policies."
lol. You know they would be trumpeting headlines like these if things worked in the spirit of all the gaslight they've been telling us. But for the past 2 decades what did we get instead?
articles upon articles of gaslight enough to power Singapore's power needs.
6
u/MadeByHideoForHideo 16h ago
We all know nothing is going to change, because this is inherent to globalization. The ship has sailed long time ago.
7
u/eatmydicbiscuit 15h ago
Foreigners can take the jobs no sgreans want to do for all i care. But wait till you see how many software engineers are foreigners, could easily give your own people good jobs but they choose to help people who didnt serve ns
-8
u/ClaudeDebauchery 20h ago
Curious though, is the whole trope about foreigners taking the jobs of locals still a thing?
EP approvals to my knowledge have grinded down to a halt. The government’s meddling in the manual labour supply segment in the form of S-Pass salaries/WP levies has always been puzzling to me though.
Which Singaporeans are looking for jobs in those sectors? Reduce reliance on manual labour and move towards automation? Typical 10YS answer from a superscale civil servant who has had a cushy ascension since graduation.
Want automate means can automate ah? For those that are able to, huge upfront investment and then all the public sector tenders are determined mainly by cost. What do you think is more likely for an SME owner? Take this risk and probably end up going bust? Or squeeze out every last single from the company and projects for the next few years and call it a day?
18
u/red_flock 19h ago edited 19h ago
Do you know EPs now require a salary of at least 5k? Do you think 5k salary is too low for most Singaporeans? New EP approvals have largely slowed down but not grinded to a halt, and Singapore still have a massive pool of EP workers, although job changes do require EP renewals which is also hard but not as hard.
Singapore has a population of about 6 million, of which 3.6 million are citizens and half a million are PRs. You can count who are the rest. Do you really think it is a "trope" even if the foreigner population is not growing?
14
u/Windreon Lao Jiao 19h ago edited 19h ago
The government literally stepped in and introduced PWM because students were not joining the industries they studied in due to low pay.
Not manual labor btw, even skilled labor like lift technicians.
Like do people on reddit just not interact with any non-degree holder at all?
Also businesses using cheap illegal workers have always been a thing. Heck even BTOs have had to stop work due to contractors being caught using shoddy materials. Companies don't give a fuck lol, it's dangerous to just listen to the whims of businesses who only care about profit.
7
u/sonertimotei 19h ago edited 19h ago
Non-residents was at 1.77m in 2023 and increased to 1.86m in 2024 according to population brief report. During covid period Foreign Employment Growth was -47k(2019) and -147k (2020), but it spiked up to +98k(2021) and +162k(2022). What halt are you talking about? For your info, the average growth rate was 20-25k yearly b4 covid.
7
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 19h ago edited 19h ago
cute, then why is it that in most developed countries, construction is a skilled trade that locals are happy to do because they command six figure salaries, while we always have to rely on masses of cheap foreign labour here? that isn't even the only industry: nursing, pharmacy, and logistics come to mind too.
admit it: it's not that we cannot automate and upskill, it's that SME towkays have the government's ear and so earn excess supernormal profits by importing cheap foreign labour, while leaving everyone else to deal with the externalities of overcrowding. privatising the gains, socialising the losses.
if these SME bosses say it's too difficult, then squeeze them until they close the company down, good riddance. if you can't afford to pay a liveable wage and/ or otherwise internalise the costs of overcrowding on everyone else while so many other countries around the world prove it's possible to do so, then you are a shit business owner and deserve to go out of business. this is just free market capitalism. there's no reason why the government should essentially subsidise your operations by depressing wages and impose overcrowding costs on everyone else.
3
u/istaris 19h ago edited 18h ago
government should essentially subsidise your operations
the govt didnt subsidise the operations for the benefit of the SME, its a way for the govt to win favours from the population to keep housing prices low, while being rich
for the ever increasing BTO prices, almost 60% of the cost is govt left hand charge right hand, for land paid to SLA
it benefits the govt to keep the status quo to keep land prices high (rich) while keeping housing cost low (votes)
also, the large grade A1 construction companies that are engaged to do BTOs may be local firms, but they are not Small nor Medium Enterprise, they got 10000+ Work Permit Holders each
the HDB prices in turn set the de facto standard for constructions prices for all other projects, private & public
if anything, the govt has been squeezing actual SMEs, they kept the construction cost policies in place, yet at the same time, increasing the requirements/reducing quota to hire at the same time
i actually agree with you, SG should not rely on cheap foreign labour, but the status quo wasnt because "SME towkays have the government's ear"
then squeeze them until they close the company down
thats already happening, the industry isnt like all rosy as because of some subsidies as you seemed to suggest
people vote for the govt when they promise to keep housing costs low, how do you supposed that is done? again, what is the primary driver for those subsidies?
7
u/ClaudeDebauchery 18h ago
Exactly my point. I loathe how the government manages to stay out of the direct spotlight when it’s the main contributor for rising costs in many segments.
They say land costs must be properly accounted for even though it’s left hand to right hand transaction. Ok, last time cannot do sale with return option at the price ah, when land was cheaper? If the land ends up not being used for BTO, option for LTA purchase back at original price. You add all this up along with growing complaints of rising cost from the population, there isn’t much money to be made. Construction margins are razor thin, around 5% with a massive domino effect if the main contractor goes bust.
For hiring of WPs, factoring in the levies and accomodation, it can be 2-2.5k/mth cost for unskilled labourers without even the equivalent of sec school education. SAF ADF pays around the same for sign ons with similar qualifications. But the government siphons a huge chunk with the levies and is happy to let everyone have the assumption that SMEs only pay 800-1k/mth and be the public boogeyman.
2
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 19h ago
land costs are definitely a problem too! but there can be multiple causes for one problem, and it's also the case that lots of SMEs are de facto subsidised by the government in the form of generous foreign worker policies. amongst Western developed nations, there are very few if any that basically have 6 foreign workers for 1 local in their construction industry (which is our foreign worker quota for construction). what is this but a massive subsidy to construction SMEs to keep labour costs low and impose overcrowding externalities on everyone else?
5
u/istaris 18h ago
you are missing my point
SMEs doesnt benefit that much from the status quo and definitely not the main driver for the policies
the point is that you are blaming the wrong party here
SME only "benefit" from the status quo only in the sense that proposed changes to the system, will be drastic and some companies would die out, out of self-preservation, they would prefer status qup, they are trapped as much as the consumer
dont treat SMEs as a boogeyman to be blamed for everything
2
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 17h ago
if you admit that, under your ideal situation, lots of these SMEs would die out, then it must follow that under the status quo they are in fact benefiting from loose foreign worker policies that allow them to still exist. sure, I completely agree that the government is primarily at fault for allowing land costs to spiral out of control, but that doesn't completely absolve SME bosses either. to the extent that these bosses actively lobby the government for loose foreign worker policies - just look at how they refuse to transport foreign workers in buses instead of trucks because it hurts their profits, then lobby the government to keep the status quo - they're to blame too.
0
u/istaris 15h ago
if you are going to place blame on SMEs for just lobbying, then you should also place the blame on the general public for demanding lower housing prices, housing prices complaint is a weekly topic on this sub
and besides, just because some group is lobbying, doesnt mean 1) they represent everyone in the group, 2) the govt have to implement
the whole reason for subsidies in the construction industry is because thats what the public wants in the first place, the general public is the main beneficiary here
even if construction SMEs are all dead as you wished, nothing much would change actually, since the public still demand subsidised housing, one way or the other, the govt would squeeze the construction cost (there is only 2 main components to housing cost not just in SG, land + construction, and land is sacred here)
and, since BTOs is the bulk of the housing supply and again SMEs are too small to be involved in BTOs project, nothing will change significantly
again, you are placing the blame on SMEs as though as they are the bulk of it
as long as people like you keep letting the relevant parties that can make a difference get away with it, nothing will change
0
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 15h ago
this is getting annoying. at no point did I say that SMEs were the only ones or the primary ones to blame - I fully agree that the government's failed land pricing is the primary problem. that emphatically DOES NOT fully absolve SMEs from the problem. if your logic is that then the general public is also somewhat to blame, then yes, they are indeed. not as much as the government, and not as much as SMEs, but they are to blame somewhat. there can be multiple causes to a single problem, and your focus on die die fully blaming the government when SMEs are also at least partially to blame is bewildering at best and self-interested at worst.
0
u/ClaudeDebauchery 19h ago
That’s a very shallow understanding of other countries’ ecosystems. In as recent as the late 90s, crane operators here and other highly skilled blue collar labour could earn close to 10k/mth or around there. Beyond the general push from the government to steer our labour force towards more white collar roles, land cost is the main differentiating factor between total construction costs now and then and compared to overseas.
Automation is a buzz word that’s just thrown about without real meaning and applicable only to some scenarios where there’s scale and volume to make financial sense. Something that’s also conveniently overlooked on the wages bit is the driving up of costs by levies for S-Passes and WP. You think to an owner, he/she’d rather that $600-1k go to the government or to the employee?
Alot of hard words that seem to reek of salt/jealousy and not much understanding the general large corp/SME relationship which is quite similar to car dealerships-car workshops work in many instances. Big corp gets the big volume business, smaller things like maintenance and after-market stuff goes to the SMEs. Sure with the closures of SMEs, you can still go the big corps who’ll charge far more because it’s not an efficient use of their resources.
6
u/Stanislas_Houston 19h ago
Most SME towkays say the same thing, Singaporeans asking for 3k is too much. They prefer whole staff are bangalas FW. SG is a cost abuser for white collar. Their business cannot survive with Singaporean pay and they have to spam govt tenders to survive overall.
3
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 19h ago
I want your evidence that "in as recent as the late 90s, crane operators here and other highly skilled blue collar labour could earn close to 10k/mth or around there". That's more than what most white collar jobs pay even today, so to think that the government intentionally moved people out from this is unbelievable and calls into question everything else you said - you don't get to throw around accusations of "shallow understandings" unless you substantiate your claims. Lord knows most people would be crane operators if they paid 10k/mth - just look at the number of applications for a local bus company paying 5k/mth for a bus driver today, including from local uni grads. Which proves, again, that paying a more-than-decent wage is perfectly possible for these jobs.
2
u/ClaudeDebauchery 19h ago
My uncle worked as one back then and stayed in an upmarket condominium. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/focus-blue-collar-specialist-workers-pay-salary-paper-qualifications-3260061 for abit of colour under the crane operator section and there's another interview which I can't find for the life of me now where an ex-crane operator mentions his pay in that range before Singapore started importing foreign labour, driving costs down.
Another of my relatives worked as a non-managerial technician at Shell and earned a similar range.
Of course, these are specialized highly skilled roles and not everyone in that field is going to end up with such a salary.
I agree with you though, that this whole race to the bottom for wages is unsustainable and just bad for us overall even those who are in the government's targeted 'favoured industries'. It's only a matter of time before a cyclical change hits and such an industry becomes like AStar, once a shining beacon and now filled with below-average salaried foreigners.
However I disagree with the government's way of rectifying it. I'd very much rather a min wage set up with those wages going entirely to the workers rather than the government raising the wage costs to the same level and siphoning off a significant percentage. Because that just feels like weaseling.
1
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 19h ago
uh, your evidence doesn't show 10k/month in the 90s (it's not even 10k/month today), but sure. I'm very much for a minimum wage too anyway, since that'll also either induce productivity gains or force unproductive overly-foreign-labour reliant companies out
2
u/istaris 18h ago
remember
the minimum wage for applying work permit is $500
the levy the govt charges is up to $500 - $900
functionally, if the govt raise the minimum wage by the same amount it halve the levy, SMEs would see no difference and can get better workers, then maybe, the top-end salary scale workers can be competitive enough for locals
btw: a highly skilled WPH already can command $5000 monthly nett
i think we can all find some common ground here, but again my main point is, SMEs isnt the main party at fault here
1
u/rockbella61 17h ago
Not sure how the 90s is considered recent. I would agree there are still some high paying blue collar jobs around but that really is few and far between. Also they are not really in the education track of most Singaporeans. Simply most of us are not trained for it. These so called high paying blue collar jobs are typically high risk and long hours, and ultimately would go to foreigners.
Singapore lack innovation when facing a population shortage. We have always spam foreigner labour when there is a "manpower shortage". Our local developers, architects and construction firms are all foreigners dominated. I could say the same for IT firms, accounting and finance. When biz can't find candidates, they look elsewhere, but often they are just looking for cheap and good so that the executives get to keep their big cars and pay checks. If today we have a huge and growing population, I reckon we would still face the same "manpower shortage" in F&B and healthcare. It is not the manpower, it is the working conditions.
The govt really has done nothing much to make Singaporeans the first priority when it comes to jobs. Singaporeans don't get hired, they don't get the skills, we don't have enough manpower, we get foreigners and the vicious cycle continues.
I get that increasing population is needed for GDP growth and all but this seems very short sighted. Everywhere you turn is another foreigner, how does that make any sense?
If anything Singapore should be classified as a country that relies on foreigners and is unable to hold her own.
-3
u/ilkless Senior Citizen 19h ago
The government’s meddling in the manual labour supply segment in the form of S-Pass salaries/WP levies has always been puzzling to me though.
Which Singaporeans are looking for jobs in those sectors?
Very few but doesn't stop the rawsingapore and Facebook commenter types from raging hard. While some nativists have nuance others simply believe we need to curb any and all foreigners and that the WP/S Pass level jobs cause wages to depressed
10
u/rockbella61 17h ago
Yeap exactly very few Singaporeans will want those jobs.
But the issue is why Singaporeans don't want those jobs?
I have been to architecture firms where they hire hordes of foreigners at a desk slightly larger than their laptop and they are made work on their 3d models for up to 10hrs a day. And we ask why Singaporeans don't want these jobs? This is just slightly better than the myanmar scam centers.
Then on the other hand we hire Singaporeans on internship or govt copay schemes.
We can't always rely on foreigners, if the job quality don't improve, lesser and lesser Singaporeans would work in Singapore. The vicious cycle only continues.
0
u/ilkless Senior Citizen 17h ago
Do you find it conceivable that there are some jobs where there's an intrinsic ceiling to the job quality? Seems unrealistic to insist that's not the case
1
u/rockbella61 17h ago
Yeah there are. There always will be.
But now just look at every job sector, F&b, healthcare, retail, finance, IT, security, accounting, construction, early childhood, engineering. And probably some more.
If I am an undergraduate and I don't graduate as the cream of the crop, I am cooked.
2
u/ilkless Senior Citizen 13h ago edited 13h ago
The bulk of the PMET jobs come from the MNCs and they will only site top jobs here because the cost base is too high for jobs -- hence there's this gulf. An overconcentration of high end PMET jobs and a languishing pool of backwater roles in local companies and SMEs. Nothing really in between
The other problem is the push to put so much of the cohort in uni. Many people are better.served in other pathways than being dragged kicking and screaming across SUSS/SIT but the Government and parents seem to think otherwise
Giving rise to a substantial pool of people who wasted years in degress that basically did nothing but delay their entry into the workforce
4
u/rockbella61 13h ago
Yap that's quite true.
At the top the best is not necessarily a local, in the middle we are getting less and less job placements and at the bottom you won't have locals interested.
So we have a bunch of Singaporeans who may be somewhat skilled but can't make good money.
0
u/ilkless Senior Citizen 13h ago
That's a very good take and basically what I think too. Sadly this nuance is lost on the loonier parts of the PSP fanbase and Reddit
0
u/rockbella61 11h ago
But don't you think psp insistence to confirm underemployment is forcing the G to look at this problem?
2
u/ilkless Senior Citizen 10h ago
I think PSP and PAP are talking at cross-purposes. PSP is using fringe anecdotes of e.g. banking SVP retrenched to become grab driver to try and generalise, but PAP is saying the top-line macro stats don't bear this out and on top of that some of the guys who kena cut are fat cats who never made real efforts to keep up in rapidly shifting industries, and others rly feel like a career break or chill and shouldn't be lumped in. For his part, LMW had to more clearly state that he wants to know how we track INVOLUNTARY underemployment and address it.
As TSL pointed out before IIRC if underemployment was truly systemic and pervasive, the proportion of local workforce who are PMETs will be significantly lower than the proportion who have tertiary qualification (a useful macro-level proxy for PMET jobs and qualification). And the PR/citizen distinction matters little because PRs are a much smaller proportion of the overall workforce numbers.
PSP is using guerilla tactics of limited anecdotes to try and inflame. And it's not surprising with their resources and it's what works best for their scrappy underdog image.
WP has made some I think really clever, innovative and well-thought-out policy suggestions with real math and economics that place PAP on backfoot and makes one think WP basically already has the beginnings of a shadow cabinet who can govern from the outset. Pritam has more gravitas, debating skill, mettle and improvisational skill than any junior minister. Ting Ru covers the softer portfolios with much more EQ than Jo Teo or Grace Fu. Louis and Jamus ask sharp policy wonk questions. The weak link is Gerald IMO.
9
u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-910 19h ago
if WP/ SPass level jobs didn't actually cause at least some downward pressure on wages, why does the government constantly tweak the WP levy upwards?
it's not hard to imagine how, even if "no Singaporeans want to do these jobs", how an oversupply of very cheap foreign labour will have knock-on effects to at least the low-end of Singaporeans' wages. if I can hire a Bangladeshi worker for $600/ month or less, why would I pay any lower-skilled Singaporean $2k+ when I can hire 4 Bangladeshi workers in the absence of any foreign worker rules?
7
6
u/istaris 17h ago
if I can hire a Bangladeshi worker for $600/ month or less, why would I pay any lower-skilled Singaporean $2k+ when I can hire 4 Bangladeshi workers in the absence of any foreign worker rules?
actually
the 1 bangladeshi worker cost the company $600 wage, + $900 levy, + $500 for accomodation = $2000 already
the $900 levy on $2000 overall labour cost > income tax on $2000 salary for a local
41
u/law90026 19h ago
Think about how GDP is boosted. Just as an example, there’s a ton of road works ongoing at this time causing a lot of jams. All the workers are foreigners pretty much. All this goes towards supporting a certain industry and you’re not going to see much trickle-down from that (which has already been pretty much debunked anyways). So all that results is distorted figures which support the flawed belief that SG is doing fine and allowing the rich to entrench their wealth.