Every year, LinkedIn taps into its data and supplements it with a direct survey of 1000 participants between the ages of 18 and 77 to provide an overview of the job market in Singapore.
Here are its 2024 start-of-the-year findings, released yesterday.
Desire for change
This time, a whopping 86 per cent of respondents are considering finding a new job in the coming year — up by 15 percentage points over 2023.
This is despite cooling labour market conditions with a gradually decreasing number of vacancies, as the Singaporean economy has already reached full employment, with just under 3 per cent of residents reporting joblessness.
Of course, it’s hard to expect that nearly everybody in the economy is going to find new employment (or even attempt to).
Instead, these responses indicate the squeeze caused by two years of high inflation, which added to uncertainty about life costs, motivating people to at least consider looking for a better-paying job.
It is reflected in the survey’s findings, with the top reasons for the desire to make a career switch being higher wages and better work-life balance, suggesting a stressful life with considerable financial uncertainty.
So, which jobs could fulfil at least one of these conditions? Who is the most needed in Singapore?
Well, LinkedIn looked into that as well, updating its list of the fastest-growing jobs in the country, based on the data from the preceding 5 years, up to July 31, 2023.
Fastest-growing jobs in Singapore
| Job Title | Category | Job Description | Hybrid job availability | |
| 1 | Quantitative Developer | IT / Finance | Developing and implementing quantitative models in financial firms, like investment banks. | 56% |
| 2 | Sustainability Consultant | Sustainability | Designing, implementing, and overseeing green initiatives for clients to assess environmental impacts and drive sustainable practices. | 44% |
| 3 | Security Operations Center Analyst | IT | Protect a company’s computer network by monitoring system activity, identifying and responding to threats and patching any system security flaw. | 37% |
| 4 | Real Estate Agent | Real Estate | Match buyers with properties that meet their needs and help sellers get the best price for their property. | 20% |
| 5 | Sales Development Representatives | Business | Identify and establish connections with prospective customers (leads), determining those most likely to make a purchase and passing on their details to salespeople in their organisation. | 44% |
| 6 | Business Development Representatives | Business | Concentrate on expanding their organisations’ business through finding and developing strategic business relationships, so as to generate new business. | 31% |
| 7 | Infrastructure Engineer | IT | Responsible for designing, deploying, and maintaining network and server infrastructure. | 48% |
| 8 | Cyber Security Engineer | IT | Maintain the security of IT infrastructure and develop solutions for digital threats such as hacking. | 47% |
| 9 | Site Reliability Engineer | IT | Create and implement automated software tools to maximise a system’s reliability and efficiency. | 30% |
| 10 | Back-end Developer | IT | Code and build program servers and database functions that form the backbone of a website or application. | 26% |
| 11 | Cloud Engineer | IT | Manage a company’s cloud-based systems and are responsible for setting it up, ensuring its stability, implementing updates and customising its features to suit end users’ needs. | 39% |
| 12 | Data Science Specialist | IT / Business | Collecting and analysing large amounts of data and then changing it into insights that are useful for business decisions. | 55% |
| 13 | Search Engine Optimisation Specialist | IT | Optimising a company’s website and content to ensure maximum visibility in search engine results. | 42% |
| 14 | Investment Specialists | Finance | Developing and executing investment strategies using financial data, market trends, and industry insights. | 23% |
| 15 | Chief of Staff | Business | Oversee everyday operations and functions between the top executives and other employees to address issues, plan processes and support key projects to meet company goals. | 46% |
| 16 | Trading Analyst | Finance | Specialise in studying the stock market and its related fields. | 8% |
| 17 | Growth Specialist | Business | Developing and implementing strategies to drive an organisation’s growth and expansion through marketing, sales and business development efforts. | 26% |
| 18 | Partnership Manager | Business | Managing and developing relationships with a wide variety of partners and clients. | 47% |
| 19 | Legal Consultant | Legal | Provide legal guidance to businesses and individuals. | 62% |
| 20 | Environmental, Health and Safety Manager | Sustainability / Safety | Oversee and review ESH policies, standards and procedures. | 18% |
Tech still reigns supreme
As you can see, nearly half of the list consists of IT-related professions, occasionally needed in a business context. In other words — you can’t go wrong choosing to develop a tech-related skillset, even if your job may not be that of an engineer.
Unsurprisingly, these positions tend to offer the highest degree of flexibility, with hybrid job availability hovering around the 50 per cent mark (i.e. about half of them accept remote work in some form).
Another interesting group of professions to look at is Sustainability, following a growing push by many companies to be more environmentally friendly.
Sustainability Consultant’s entry at no. 2 on the list of fastest-growing jobs may indicate more opportunities in the future, as businesses create more permanent positions to ensure compliance with new laws as well as the expectations of their clients and customers.
The list is completed by more traditional jobs in business and finance, always in high demand in Singapore which remains a hub for these in Southeast Asia (or even the world).
Fundamentally, employers’ expectations have not changed that much over the years, with strong skills in crunching numbers (be it for IT companies or banks) still fetching a premium in the labour market.
