According to networking website Linkedin, more than 50% of the high-paying digital jobs like content specialists are taken up by foreigners. At about 20%, Indian nationals take up most of the Singapore jobs as data scientists and cyber security specialists, while the head of digital departments are mostly from Australia and Malaysia. Singaporeans take up only about 40% of the high-paying digital jobs in Singapore.
Screenshot from Linkedin
The Linkedin report is however slammed as “misunderstood” by the Singapore Ministry of Manpower (MOM), who argued that the statistics only show where they were previously based in and not their nationality. MOM then contradicted itself saying the figures are accurate as about 30% of the jobs are taken up by foreigners 2 years ago in 2016, but declined comment on the 2018 figures.
Despite having foreigners take up more than 50% of the high-paying digital jobs, the Singapore government has been trying to discourage young Singaporean students from taking up tertiary education in universities.
In 2013 Minister Khaw Boon Wan said “you cannot eat a degree”, and in the subsequent years the government ran several propaganda telling Singaporeans to abandon the bachelor degree route and become food centre stall owners. In 2011, Wikileaks revealed that the Singapore government is stopping Singaporean students from enrolling in universities so more foreigners can be imported.
With a bachelor degree, a Singaporean can easily emigrate overseas – which is what the dictatorship hope not to see in a falling birth rate environment. The government also find it easier to rule a country of lowly-educated people, without many asking in-depth questions over government policies and propaganda.