From an empirical observation, the number of foreigners in Singapore has increased over the past few years. Unfortunately, some Singaporeans have the impression the foreign labour force has successfully but unfairly taken away jobs which could have been done by Singaporeans themselves.
To assuage these concerns, could the relevant authorities provide immigration and employment statistics to justify the high number foreign workers?
- the number of new value-adding jobs created in the transportation, banking, infocommunication, hotel, restaurant, entertainment and manufacturing industries over the past 5 years
- within each industry, the breakdown of the new jobs created by job descriptions, like operators, supervisors, managers
- the breakdown of the income earned in these new jobs, by income group, for example, S$1000-2000, S$2000-3000, etc
- the breakdown of the percentages of these new jobs created held by foreigners and local Singaporeans
- the differences in salary between local and foreign workers for the same job, eg SBS bus drivers, infocommunication engineers,
This increase is often explained by the fact that foreigners are needed to make up for the labour shortage situation seen in some professions. This shortage is often blamed on the fact that Singaporeans are not keen to take up these professions. Are there valid reasons viz-à-viz salaries and standard of living to explain why these jobs are not taken up by Singaporeans? How do we ensure that the high influx of foreign workers is not pressing down the value of the local Singaporean job market?
Hougang
12 years ago
