Singapore must prepare workers for more job changes and continuous retraining: Jeffrey Siow

“The centre of gravity will shift from the pre-employment stage, away from schools, away from universities, to in-employment – when you are going for retraining more often, or when you are in between jobs, doing more training and reskilling and building up the capabilities to be able to adapt, to take up new jobs and to do new things,” Mr Siow said.

He was responding to a question on the trade-offs Singapore would face in implementing the Economic Strategy Review (ESR), released in May with 32 recommendations to drive growth, jobs and resilience.

SMALLER WORKFORCE AS AN ASSET

Singapore’s demographic constraints mean the country must place greater emphasis on developing its workforce, said Mr Siow.

“Our population is ageing very quickly. Our (total fertility rate) is abysmal,” he said, adding that this would mean “a more highly skilled workforce, but a much smaller one”.

Rather than treating this purely as a constraint, Singapore could invest more intensively in each worker, he said.

“With a smaller Singaporean base, actually I can invest more per person, train them more, train them more intensively, build the structure to enable them to get access to reskilling resources more quickly, help companies, incentivise them to retrain Singaporeans and prioritise those efforts.

“That is something not many cities or countries can do.”

Singapore already has a headstart with SkillsFuture, Mr Siow said, and doing more in this area would help the country overcome its manpower constraints.