Summary:

ACI’s ASEAN Economic Competitiveness Analysis finds that Singapore’s labour market has traded off Labour Market Flexibility for Productivity Performance. Singapore has fallen from being the most flexible market at the start of the study in 2000 to being below the ASEAN-10 average in 2018.

In contrast, the Productivity Performance of Singapore has grown with the country emerging as the ASEAN-10 lead in 2018. This improvement results from Singapore’s transition towards high value-added economic activities. This has driven the cost of labour up, and in conjunction with tightening foreign labour policy caused a notable fall in Labour Market Flexibility.

Article By Kway Guan TAN

Graphic By Yixuan GE