Parliamentary reply by Minister Indranee Rajah on breakdown of non resident population

FOURTEENTH PARLIAMENT OF SINGAPORE
WRITTEN REPLY 
TUESDAY, 9 MAY 2023

Mr Leong Mun Wai:

To ask the Prime Minister for each year since 2000, what is the breakdown of non-residents in Singapore by (i) age (ii) employment status (iii) professions and (iv) income.

Ms Indranee Rajah (for the Prime Minister):

From 2000 to 2022, around 92% of the non-residents in our population each year were aged between 15 and 64 years old, those aged 0 to 14 years old accounted for around 5%, while those aged 65 years old and over made up around 3%. Given our ageing population, it is important that we have non-residents in the prime working ages to supplement our workforce and support our economic and social needs.

Around 80% of non-residents were employed i.e. held a valid work pass. The remaining 20% who were not working included dependants and foreign students. The proportion of employed non-residents remained broadly stable between 2000 to 2022.

In 2002, around 15% of employed non-residents were Professionals, Managers, Executives, and Technicians (PMETs) while the remaining 85% were non-PMETs. The proportion of PMETs among the employed non-residents had increased to 25% in 2012 in line with our social and economic needs, and stood at 27% in 2022. This is similar to the trend of PMET share in our resident workforce, which increased from 45% to 64% over the past two decades.

The median fixed monthly salaries of employed non-residents for Employment Pass (EP), S Pass and Work Permits (excluding Migrant Domestic Workers) for various years are in Table 1. The increase in the median fixed monthly salaries of work pass holders over the years reflects the steps taken to improve the complementarity of the foreign workforce, including through the raising of the qualifying salaries for EP and S Pass.

1 No available data for S Pass as S Pass was introduced in 2004.