NCMP Leong Mun Wai urged the government to rebalance its manpower policy, citing growing underemployment and the need for greater transparency in employment data for Singaporeans and PRs. He highlighted rising education costs, stagnant wages, and worsening housing affordability, calling for fair job opportunities, better wages, and stronger social support to build a “first-world Singapore” for all.
Mr Chairman,
Over this term of Parliament, I have constantly urged this Government to rebalance its manpower policy, because we have heard from many Singaporeans that they are facing great difficulties in finding good jobs and holding on to those jobs.
It appears that underemployment is a real problem for Singaporeans, especially as they age and their wages go higher. But there are signs that this problem is spreading from the older workers to the younger workers too.
At last month’s Parliamentary debate on the Workplace Fairness Bill, Minister Tan See Leng accused me of consistently looking for a smoking gun and asked me to consider there may be something that I am looking for does not exist. I would like to believe the Minister, but as underemployment concerns the livelihoods of Singaporeans, I cannot take it lightly. To convince Singaporeans, the Minister must provide conclusive evidence and statistics to prove his point.
The Minister has cited the low unemployment rate and increasing share of residents in professional, managerial and executive (PME) jobs to prove his point. Respectfully, these two statistics do not necessarily support his point that underemployment is not a growing problem among Singaporeans.
As I majored in economic statistics and econometrics in university, I know quite well that each economic statistic has its limitations and must be applied carefully to draw conclusions. Statistics can also be misused to paint a wrong narrative.
Firstly, on why the low unemployment rate can be misleading. This is because under the definition of our employment statistics, a worker is considered employed even if he has worked for only one hour per week. If it is not by choice, such a worker is obviously underemployed, but he does not contribute to the unemployment numbers.
A professional may also be underemployed when he is over qualified for the job, based on his training and education. For example, a former senior vice president of a bank who is forced to work as a Grab driver after being retrenched is seriously underemployed. This is skill-related underemployment.
Last month, the Minister said that professionals, managers, executives, and technicians (PMETs) now make up 64% of all employed residents, which matches the proportion of residents with tertiary education in the workforce. But again, this does not conclusively show that there is no serious skill-related underemployment in Singapore.
The Government has said before that even though the MOM is interested in tracking skill-related underemployment, there is no internationally accepted way of doing this. But I would like to reiterate Progress Singapore Party’s (PSP’s) view that this problem needs to be tracked and solved.
For example, we can track over time how many Singaporeans have earned lower wages, no longer have the same seniority in their jobs and have been involuntarily employed as part-time or contract workers.
Secondly, on how immigration skews the resident employment, unemployment and PME ratio statistics. Most labour statistics in Singapore are reported at the resident level. The resident classification includes Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PRs). These statistics can therefore be distorted when the residency status of workers changes from Work Pass holder to PR.
For example, hypothetically, if the number of resident PMEs have increased by 200,000 from 2005 to 2020, it does not necessarily mean that Singapore residents have gained PME jobs. If there were more than 300,000 non-resident PMEs becoming PRs at the same time, 100,000 existing residents would have lost their PME jobs during that period.
In my last four years in Parliament, I have asked repeatedly for the Government to provide a breakdown of the Singaporean and PR employment data so that we can monitor the effect of changes in workers’ residency status with the data.
Most recently, when I asked the Minister in May 2024 what percentage of the increase in resident employment by 4,900 in 2023 is due to non-residents becoming residents in Singapore, the Minister replied, “This line of questioning is not productive and undermines social cohesion in Singapore.” He also added that MOM does not collect data on the net change in resident employment by workers’ prior residency status in its labour market survey.
However, without tracking the resident labour force based on the workers’ prior residency status, I wonder how the Minister can conclude that there is no significant underemployment in Singapore and that I am looking for a smoking gun.
I urge the Government to start collecting data on changes in resident employment and the resident labour force based on the worker’s prior residency status. This will help us get a better understanding of issues around resident employment. I do not believe that it xenophobic or nativist to ask for such statistics. I am also not seeking to divide Singaporeans by asking for these statistics. I am representing Singaporeans who want to know more.
I deeply respect the contributions of new citizens, PRs and foreign workers to Singapore. Many foreign workers make the choice to uproot themselves to build a new life here in Singapore. Some of them have chosen to sink their roots more deeply and take up PR or citizenship. From the bottom of my heart, I acknowledge the contribution they have made to Singapore.
I have said before in this House that PSP is for an open economy and society, and we recognise the need for foreign talent to complement our Singaporean Core. This has never changed. And in speaking up for Singaporeans, we are also speaking up for the existing PRs who are really our economic citizens. Even as we welcome new foreign workers to Singapore, we must make sure that this does not affect the interests of existing citizens and PRs in Singapore. Not everyone has the resources, ability or desire to seek a better life elsewhere. For many existing citizens and PRs in Singapore, Singapore is their only home.
By being more transparent with the data, the Government can actually calm anti-foreigner sentiments and assure Singaporeans that immigration does not harm their economic interest. It will help the Government get more buy-in for its immigration policies. Without the data, Singaporeans will always wonder, at the back of their head, whether immigration is really benefiting them. So, I hope that the officeholders will stop labelling me as a xenophobe or a racist so that we can have a rational and reasoned discussion on the impact of immigration on Singaporean workers and their wages.
By some measures, the Singaporean worker is worse off today than he was 20 years ago. During his Budget speech, the Prime Minister said, in the past, tertiary graduates had fewer job options to choose from, with career paths revolving around a few traditional areas. These days, the job landscape is far more diverse. Tertiary graduates these days may have more diverse job options, but they may not be financially better off than tertiary graduates of the past.
In 1979, the median starting salary of a university graduate was $957 per month. The median starting salary of an NTC-3 graduate from the Vocational and Industrial Training Board (VITB), the predecessor of today’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE), was $633 per month. How did these starting salaries compare with housing prices?
In July 1979, after a 15% price increase by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), the price of a new 4-room flat sold by the HDB in new towns was $27,100. This is equivalent to about 28 times the median starting salary of a university graduate, or 43 times the median starting salary of a VITB graduate. Today, the median starting salary of a university graduate is $4,500 per month as of 2024. In the October 2024 Built-To-Order (BTO) launch exercise, the cheapest 4-room flats launched, excluding grants, cost $290,000, or 64 times the median starting salary of a university graduate, while the cheapest 5-room flats cost $427,000, or 95 times the median graduate starting salary.
Based on housing affordability, the median university graduate today is worse off than the median ITE graduate in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those years were truly the golden age for the Singaporean worker with high starting salaries, plentiful jobs and high Central Provident Fund (CPF) contribution rates of up to 50%.
Our students are spending more time and money to get educated and learn skills at university today. But even after this education arms race, our university graduates are achieving salaries that allow them to buy smaller and more expensive flats than what an ITE graduate could have bought 45 years ago. For those who do not have a university degree, the prospects are even dimmer and younger workers also face the prospects of skills-related underemployment later in their career.
Mr Chairman, let me conclude.
Singaporeans are highly skilled and educated, and they can be competitive if there is a level playing field and a government that helps them to upgrade while they are on their jobs, and not after they have lost their jobs.
We want a first-world Singapore, where the Government uses its power to create incentives for businesses to keep and create good jobs for Singaporeans.
We want a first-world Singapore where workers earn a fair wage for their work, where the elderly are looked after in retirement and where younger Singaporeans feel comfortable and confident enough in the future to have children.
This is the first-world Singapore we should aspire to create this SG60.
This is the first-world Singapore that PSP will fight for.