Singapore closes out 2025 with an employment paradox. While headline indicators look resilient, word on the street and the online chatter indicate many workers feel stuck. Official data shows unemployment remains low even as retrenchments are contained and job vacancies cool from post-pandemic highs.
3Q 2025? Government info from the Ministry of Manpower shows retrenchments were low (1.6 per 1,000 employees). Meanwhile, employers increasingly utilise short work-week arrangements or temporary layoffs, versus cutting jobs outright.
But Ives Tay, a Singaporean workforce consultant, argues stress points have moved beneath the surface. “Singapore’s unemployment rate remains low, and job vacancies are still high. However, these headline figures no longer capture the full picture,” Tay said.
Signal in the noise
Tay’s view? The more revealing metrics are those tracking friction: how long job seekers stay unemployed, whether retrenched workers regain stable employment, and whether vacancies convert into actual hires.
“What we are seeing is not a lack of jobs, but greater caution in hiring decisions. Employers are narrowing role requirements and prioritising immediate productivity. This creates challenges for experienced workers whose value lies in judgment and accumulated experience rather than exact role matching.
“In today’s environment, low unemployment does not automatically translate into smooth job movement,” Tay argues, suggesting it reflects a structural shift rather than a short-term fluctuation.
3Q 2025 saw things become clearer. Vacancies moderated, hiring was soft, and firms grew increasingly cautious. Tay’s take? As employers are narrowing role requirements and prioritising immediate productivity, in practical terms, this turns a “tight labour market” into a highly selective one. And this especially impacts workers whose strengths don’t fit neatly into checkbox hiring.
Mid-career squeeze: Not a skills problem
All of this creates challenges for experienced workers in their 40s and 50s, whose value lies in judgment and accumulated experience, versus exact role matching. According to Tay, the challenge is often misdiagnosed as skills obsolescence. More precisely, it’s about how employers filter for “fit.”
Tay explains: “Employment challenges for workers in their 40s and 50s are less about skills becoming outdated and more about how hiring decisions are made.”
He highlights how many companies in the city-state increasingly optimise for predictability, immediate role fit and cost certainty. He elaborates: Mid-career workers often bring leadership, problem-solving ability, and adaptability – strengths that are harder to capture in standard screening processes.”
“Age bias is rarely explicit. It appears through assumptions about compensation, concerns about overqualification, or questions about adaptability,” he adds.
Upskilling: Not a total solution
Singapore’s SkillsFuture ecosystem, held up as a model by the World Economic Forum (WEF), is frequently positioned as the answer to disruption. Tay’s take? Necessary but insufficient. He explains: “SkillsFuture has played an important role in helping Singaporeans upgrade their capabilities.”
Tay argues the gap lies in employer risk: onboarding uncertainty, probation outcomes, and whether roles are redesigned to genuinely accommodate mid-career transitions.
Improving the trained candidate supply does not necessarily translate to increased demand for them. Especially when firms are tightening requirements. The outcome? “As a result, some mid-career workers complete training yet still struggle to secure roles,” Tay observes.
“This points to a broader imbalance. Training efforts need to be matched by smoother hiring pathways and stronger support for trial employment and mid-career transitions. Without addressing both sides of the equation, upskilling on its own will have limited impact,” Tay notes.
This theme is reflected in government data for 3Q 2025. The metric to note? The “resident re-entry rate into employment within 6 months post-retrenchment declined slightly from 56.3% in 2Q 2025 to 55.4% in 3Q 2025,” according to the Ministry of Manpower.
Graduates: Entering a risk-averse economy
But what about the younger generation? The current labour market transition isn’t just impacting mid-career workers. Newer entrants in the younger generation are confronting a shifting set of assumptions. This despite doing “the right things” like internships and attachments.
“Many graduates today enter the workforce with internships and practical exposure yet encounter a more cautious hiring environment. Graduate programs have become more selective, some firms have slowed hiring, and more roles are offered on short-term or contract terms. At the same time, automation has reduced the number of traditional entry-level tasks,” Tay notes
The outcome? Graduates entering the workforce terrain face a difficult middle ground. They’re no longer entirely new, yet not adequately experienced for conservative hiring criteria.
Tay highlights how this reflects broader shifts in how organisations manage risk and cost, rather than shortcomings on the part of graduates themselves.
Backdrop: Wealth inflows, asset inflation
The shifting tides of the labour market, in Singapore and elsewhere, also play out against sharp, highly visible wealth divides globally. This is compounded by asset inflation and fragile confidence.
April 2025 saw Henley & Partners’ Wealthiest Cities report rank Singapore fourth globally, with 242,400 millionaires. This aligns with findings by UBS’ Global Wealth Report, released in June 2025.
These highlight how average wealth rose, even as typical households feel less momentum. And it’s an imbalance reflected in the gap between average and median wealth figures and perceptions of uneven wealth allocations in the city-state.
Housing is where such perceptions in Singapore are crystallised. Public housing resale transactions above S$1 million? They’ve become increasingly common in the last few years, with 2025 posting a record run in 2Q 2025.
Even as overall price growth slows, the persistence of such headlines shapes how households interpret the situation and the opportunities. Asked about the impact of wealth flows into Singapore, Tay says: “Singapore’s ability to attract global wealth remains a strategic advantage, but it also produces wider effects that merit attention.”
“Inflows of very wealthy individuals can influence asset prices and average wealth figures. While they do not directly displace local workers, they shape perceptions about fairness and opportunity.”
“Grey-collar” work & future transitions
Among Tay’s more practical suggestions? Broaden what Singapore considers a “good” job, expanding this definition to include “grey-collar roles”; jobs which blend technical skill with hands-on operational judgment.
Such work can be an underused pathway for resilience and includes automation maintenance, logistics systems, facilities management, and technical services. In Tay’s view, these roles are less vulnerable to automation or offshoring. And they can offer more stable progression than “crowded professional tracks”.
The barrier is both cultural and economic. Tay says, “The key constraint is perception. Broadening how success and progression are defined would allow these roles to play a stronger role in supporting workforce resilience and confidence in upward mobility”.
Tay suggests Singapore’s next phase of workforce policy should be less about expanding training in the abstract and more about linking support to hiring outcomes.
“Workforce policy now needs greater precision,” he said, calling for incentives that help employers offer trial roles and conversion pathways for mid-career workers, while offsetting integration risk.
Employers, in turn, may need to redefine “fit.” Tay suggests designing roles that incorporate real learning curves, supporting age-diverse teams, and strengthening internal mobility. Tay frames this as competitiveness measures, rather than just being about inclusion.
“Better use of local talent would strengthen long-term competitiveness. In a tighter labour market, such adaptations are not only inclusive practices but sound business decisions,” he adds.
As for job seekers and their families? He recommends strategic flexibility: “Career paths are becoming less linear, and individuals may need to adjust expectations accordingly. This includes being open to adjacent roles, prioritising income stability during transitions, and viewing career detours as temporary phases rather than permanent setbacks.”
But such individual adaptability must be supported by system-level changes, Tay adds, noting that if retraining efforts aren’t matched by smoother hiring pathways, frustration can build over time.
“Sustainable workforce adaptation requires both personal flexibility and institutional support.”
Shifting social contract
There is also the matter of the widening wealth gap in Singapore. For example, as per the 2025 UBS report, the average adult wealth in Singapore stands at US$441,596 vs. the median adult wealth of $113,976.
This is coupled with soaring public housing prices and cost-of-living strains. Taken together, they pose risks to the social cohesion of Singapore as they intersect with ongoing employment mismatches for locals.
Tay’s perspective is that as average wealth rises but median wealth remains flat, this will erode confidence. He observes: “Combined with high housing costs and longer job searches, some individuals begin to question whether upward mobility remains dependable.”
“Addressing job mismatches early and credibly helps maintain trust and long-term stability. The goal is not to change the system’s fundamentals, but to ensure it continues to work as intended for the broad majority.”
With these risks at play, the policy objective isn’t to overhaul the system. Tay says the crucial need is to ensure pathways to stability and progression remain “visible and credible” for the greater mass of the Singaporean public.
That may be the workforce story of Singapore in 2025. Rather than a job shortage, it’s about a growing gap between what the economy says it needs. And what sort of requirements and risks are hiring systems currently willing to take a chance on.
