Most ICT workers are residents
I refer to the article “Most of workers in ICT sector are citizens, PRs” (Straits Times, Mar 25).
It states that “Singapore citizens and permanent residents make up the majority of workers in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector.
The sector employed 125,300 workers last year, and two-thirds of them are resident workers.
The remaining one-third are made up of foreign work pass holders”.
How many S’poreans?
How many of the “resident workers” are Singaporeans?
In this connection, an estimated 550,000 new PRs and citizens were granted from 2007 to 2015.
PRs better off?
One possible reason for “resident” instead of “Singaporeans” statistics may be that generally PRs have higher wages, lower unemployment rate, higher increase in wages, etc, compared to Singaporeans.
For example, the median gross monthly income of full-time employed residents (excluding employer CPF contribution) was $3,250 at June 2013, compared to $3,052 for Singaporeans.
The real annualised increase in wages for full-time employed Singaporeans from 2003 to 2013 was only 0.3 and 1.5 per cent per annum, for the 20th percentile and median respectively.
In contrast, for residents – the annualised increase was 0.8 and 1.6 per cent respectively, including employer CPF contribution (I am unable to find the statistics for excluding CPF).
To put the above into perspective – a Singaporean worker earning $1,000 in 2003 would only have had a real increase of about $30, to just $1,030 in 2013 (after 10 years!).
Publish S’porean workers’ report every year?
I understand that the last time that the “Report: Singaporeans In The Workforce” was published, was on 11 October 2011.
Why not publish this report on Singaporean workers’ statistics annually?
Leong Sze Hian
