Don't leave mid-level jobs behind in Singapore's AI take-off

The new era is not just about innovation, but also about creating high-quality jobs to continue enabling upward mobility.

- Sahara Sadik and Chia Ying

At 48, Mrs Rei Teo typifies professionals affected by corporate restructuring. Her bank job was reshaped in 2024, prompting her to leave — never expecting that her experience would count for so little in trying to land another permanent job. Weak hiring sentiment, as banks reconfigure roles with technology, has pushed her into a contract role, the best of limited options.

This push-down effect on professionals is a fault line in Singapore’s labour market identified by the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL), Singapore’s lead in an international research programme studying Al adoption patterns across 10 digital hubs from Singapore to Silicon Valley. The Republic’s middle jobs are relatively weak, and hence less able to absorb displaced professionals.

By “middle jobs”, we mean job roles that sit between the high-end, innovation-rich tier and the low-complexity end of the labour market.

At the high-end - roles in finance, tech and advanced manufacturing, that are globally competitive and well-paid — such jobs grew 3 percentage points to comprise 33 per cent of Singapore’s workforce between 2017 and 2022, according to IAL’s Skills and Learning Survey.

But middle-tier roles stayed flat at around 20 per cent of jobs, with most requiring fewer than three years of experience. These jobs come from a more diverse range of sectors including supply chain management and tourism. They were filled by diploma holders, but, even back then, there were early signs of young graduates moving into them, too.

Low-complexity roles such as retail staff, customer service clerks and delivery riders still made up a substantial 40 per cent of all jobs.

Al is no longer just automating routine tasks, but restructuring professional work — breaking down, standardising and redistributing complex cognitive tasks. In the process, it erodes not just entry-level jobs, but also professional jobs once seen as stepping stones to upward mobility.