There is an ever-increasing demand for talent in Singapore, particularly in the technology sector. With many of the world’s top technology companies vying with more and more start-ups, there is a shortage of staff in many areas, but particularly in technology, digitalisation and engineering. As a result, Singapore’s unemployment rate continues to fall, even below pre-pandemic levels, and there has been a sharp drop in the number of retrenchments.
This is good news for all job seekers, especially for older workers who previously found it hard to compete with cheaper, younger workers. As the labour shortage pushes up salaries, older workers are less likely to be viewed as too expensive. Similarly, many companies are trying to attract more educated women back into the workforce, particularly those who left to have children.
There is a growing demand for PMET workers (Professionals, Managers, Executives, and Technicians) and this is particularly strong for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professionals in the ICT sector (information and communication technology) as well as the wider technology and engineering sectors. To attract and retain talent, both local and foreign, many companies are more willing to offer various remote working opportunities with work-from-home (WFH) and hybrid working with a mix of office and WFH, as well as greater flexibility with staggered work times.
Some areas that are in high demand include cybersecurity; AI (artificial intelligence); data analysis, analytics, manipulation, and visualisation; IoT (Internet of Things); machine learning; programming; statistics; project management; marketing (especially digital marketing); user experience; social media; SEO; cloud; and many, many more.