As Competition for Migrant Nurses Heats Up, Singapore Should Be Worried

Many nurses are skipping Singapore altogether, instead of treating it as a stepping stone to other destinations.

- Yasmin Y. Ortiga

There is a story I often hear from Singaporeans worried about the country's healthcare workers. It starts with the acknowledgement that few locals are willing to take on nursing jobs. Despite state efforts to raise wages and improve work conditions, migrants remain a vital part of the nation's health workforce. The problem is that many foreign nurses eventually remigrate, mostly to places that offer higher wages and clear pathways to citizenship. In the end, Singapore continuously recruits new migrants to replace those who leave.

The beginning of this story is still true. But the ending is likely to change. A lot.

It is true that, while Singapore can attract healthcare workers from overseas, it suffers from an outflow of nurses seeking better opportunities elsewhere. In 2019, 38 per cent of nurses within the country were migrants on work visas, with Filipinos as the largest nationality group. This number declined to 26 per cent in 2023, as nurses either left the country or obtained permanent residency after the pandemic. Still, Singapore received an influx of new recruits that year, originating from nations like Malaysia, Myanmar, India, and the Philippines.

When we contextualize these numbers with the high attrition rate among foreign nurses (around 14.5 per cent in 2022), what we can discern is an ongoing throughflow of migrants moving to and from the country's healthcare system.

This story is not unique to Singapore. Researchers have long documented how nations like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Japan share this in-between status as "temporary stops" or "stepping stones" in nurses' migration trajectories.