Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author. Data sourced from the Singapore Digital Economy Report published by IMDA.
Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority has just released its annual report on the state of nation’s digital economy, which also includes interesting insights about the job market situation for tech workers in the country.
An industry worth S$128 billion
The share of Information & Communications sector in Singapore’s GDP has increased to 18.6%, for a total value of S$128 billion in 2024. Two thirds of it, however, does not come from the tech sector itself, but from technology-driven services that are used across all other branches of the economy.
For that reason, if you’re a young techie with ambitious career plans, you may want to bear in mind that IT companies are not the be-all and end-all, and there’s quite a lot of work that needs to be done in digitalisation processes of other businesses.
You can see how these opportunities have blossomed in the sectors catching up on deploying tech in their services in recent years, and the value added it has generated:
Similar trends can be seen in employment, where tech companies are responsible for far fewer new jobs coming to the market each year. The rate at which tech employment grows in Non I&C companies was almost four times higher than for specialised business.
It has also surpassed it in total number of tech staff:
Median salaries hit S$9000
Inclusive of employer CPF, median gross salaries for tech workers have crossed the S$9,000 mark, significantly higher than the S$5,500 median for the entire population. Since gross figures are usually presented in the news media, I’m showing them here first, for ease of comparison.
On a more relatable basis, excluding employer’s contributions, which workers never really see, median wages in I&C still came close to S$8,000, after a strong 13.5% jump on a year-on-year basis.
These figures, mind you, are not just for tech companies of course, but for all workers in Information & Communications. As you can see, it’s not only a career that pays very well in Singapore but one which outpaces other professions in different sectors. Everybody needs tech staff.
That said, not all jobs in tech are created equal, and there have been many developments in the sector over the past few years as priorities change and new skills are prized above others.
Data analytics & AI up, web development down
According to the report, skills associated with data analytics, machine learning or AI have been on the rise—both in terms of the pace of change as well as their overall share in all jobs available:
“Programming languages such as Python and SQL were the among the more highly sought-after tech skills in the past five years. In 2024, 24% of all tech job postings required Python (an increase of 9 percentage points from 2019), while SQL was required in 20% of tech job postings (an increase of 5 percentage points). The strong demand is likely a reflection of the applicability of these skills across a wide range of functions, such as data analytics, automated workflows, and development of machine learning models.”
Cloud and digital infrastructure are seeing a similar increase, as companies are moving more services off premises to dedicated data centres. Hence the steady demand for AWS or Azure experts.
“In line with this transition to a cloud-native environment, employers are increasingly seeking tech professionals who are proficient in skills associated with containerisation (e.g., Docker), orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), as well as automation (e.g., Ansible, Jenkins). These skills which enable the flexible, portable, and automated deployment of applications within cloud environments, have become more important as firms seek to scale their digital services more efficiently.”
Meanwhile, everything associated with the web has been quite stagnant.
JavaScript has registered the biggest drop of all—showing up in 12% of job postings compared to 21% just five years ago. In line with this, skills in HTML, PHP, JQuery, Ajax as well as mobile platforms of Android and iOS appear to be quite saturated, dropping in prominence over time.
If you were thinking of a career in web or mobile development, then perhaps it’s not too late to reconsider your choices. Not only are you going to see fewer employment opportunities, but their number is trending downwards as well.
In total, there are skills in 20 different areas that fall above the horizontal line, showing growing demand among employers since 2019:
- Python
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon Web Services
- Kubernetes
- SQL
- Docker
- API
- Power BI
- Linux
- Terraform
- JIRA
- Git
- React.js
- Typescript
- Go
- Ansible
- Jenkins
- Postgre SQL
- Java
- Google Cloud Platform
Proficiency in JavaScript is, of course, still a highly sought after skill, so you should not neglect it, even after it slid in the ranks. The rest of those in the bottom part of the chart, however, might require some consideration especially as AI tools are already eating into human jobs there.
Nevertheless, despite the AI revolution and layoffs that hit companies around the world, both employment in tech and salaries paid to qualified workers keep going up in Singapore—and it doesn’t seem like these trends are under threat.
- Read other articles we’ve written on Singapore’s job landscape here.
Featured Image Credit: man64/ depositphotos
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