AI is no longer just automating routine tasks, but restructuring professional work – breaking down, standardising and redistributing complex cognitive tasks; and it erodes more than just entry-level jobs, say the writers.ST FILE PHOTO
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 AI 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.
AI 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.
Indeed, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong made a call at the recent Global-City Singapore: SG60 and Beyond conference for Singapore to “think hard” about the impact of AI on jobs.
Amid the challenges arising from AI, how does Singapore rebuild the labour market middle and sustain social mobility?
The pressure is on
Singapore is especially exposed. With some of the region’s highest labour costs, firms are under pressure to do more with less labour. When machines or remote teams can perform cognitive tasks faster or cheaper, restructuring follows.
Professional roles may thin out. The ones that remain become more demanding – and harder to access. When such jobs are disrupted, even highly educated and experienced professionals like Mrs Teo are stranded, with few alternatives that do not feel like a step down.
As a global city and AI hub, Singapore is likely to retain top jobs, but the concern lies with the broad middle – an increasingly educated middle, at that.
Nearly 40 per cent of middle-wage earners – those earning between 75 and 150 per cent of the median wage – held a university degree, the IAL survey found. Since then, even more young people have followed this path, only to feel the squeeze of a tightening job market. The OECD’s 2023 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) shows Singaporeans aged 16 to 34 rank among the world’s best in information-processing skills, outperforming older cohorts.
If we cannot create space for a strong middle, we risk wasting the very talent we have worked so hard to develop.
The social compact at risk
Singapore’s greatest risk is social divergence. For our first 60 years, a job strategy of looking upward made sense. But as a First World economy among global peers, there is now little room left at the top.
A divided, two-speed workforce puts our social compact at risk. The upward ladder has become steeper, narrower – and in some cases, shorter. Without intent and action, we risk the fractures seen in other advanced economies, where global competitiveness weakens domestic inclusion.
We must rebuild the middle, where meaningful jobs can take root and thrive. If our top jobs are global roles, our middle jobs must be expert roles for comparable value. Where will we find middle jobs to match the quality at the top? Our ability to keep the social compact strong hinges on this answer.
Three alternative pathways
Professional jobs are vulnerable to AI automation and may move offshore. But many practical jobs are “geo-sticky” – rooted in the local economy – from lift technicians and paramedics to zookeepers, retail staff and hawkers. Some roles, like lift technicians, are already middle jobs but lack specialist progression, while others, such as retail staff, remain low-complexity roles. These roles are not disappearing. This makes it all the more important to improve them if they are to remain in the economy.
One way is to reinvent such practical jobs by harnessing AI.
Research by IAL and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change shows that AI’s greatest promise lies in enriching the cognitive content of such work. With the right tools, front-liners can analyse data on the ground and act on it, creating a loop of insight and execution. A sales associate could become a customer science analyst; a gardener, an AI-enabled urban farmer.
Likewise, a paramedic combining advanced emergency training with AI diagnostics emerges as a ground specialist, making split-second decisions that save lives. And the zookeeper is a ground specialist applying data and behavioural diagnostics to raise standards of animal welfare.
Even the humble hawker trade can be reinvented. With the right use of AI tools, hawkers can pivot into food entrepreneurship – building brands, growing customer communities, and teaming up to reach niche segments like confinement mums or seniors needing customised diets.
These are deep-skill roles augmented by AI. But this takes more than technology. It demands rethinking job design, career pathways, reward systems and vocational training so practical roles grow in both complexity and pay, backed by business models that can sustain them.
But IAL’s Skills and Learning Survey found technological change did not meaningfully upgrade non-complex jobs – despite them being the roles most expected to benefit. Stronger institutional support is needed to unlock the potential of reinventing practical work with AI.
Opportunities in project-based platform work
In Singapore, we often assume that jobs must be created and located here. But in a world of remote and platform-based work, good opportunities may be elsewhere. The challenge is to secure the right kind of roles: not low-cost, race-to-the-bottom gigs, but complex, knowledge-rich work that draws on deep expertise.
This is the promise of high-end platform work – online marketplaces that connect skilled professionals with projects across borders. Think of it as a digital talent exchange, where companies post projects and the best-matched professionals deliver them.
On platforms like Toptal and Catalant, software engineers, consultants, designers and other professionals work in global teams that demand both technical mastery and deep contextual judgment. These roles create new lateral career pathways for seasoned experts and mid-level talent alike.
Seizing this opportunity would require Singapore to grow a new generation of domain-deep professionals who can work across borders, embed AI into their craft, and thrive in global problem-solving networks. That may mean rethinking how we build expertise and careers, through portfolios, project work, and sustained contribution.
SMEs as job engines
To grow the middle, we also need to steer more SMEs towards value-creating strategies and support those willing to take the risk.
Three in four SMEs have weak business strategies, the IAL Business Performance and Skills Survey found. They do not aim to compete by offering unique, customisable solutions, a key pathway to differentiation and value creation.
Where this shift happens, technology is used not just for efficiency, but for innovation, which leads to improvement in job quality.
Zicom is a Singapore-rooted SME that moved from systems integration to sustainable marine design. Building on its engineering know-how, it retrained some staff and hired new talent, creating pathways for mid-level engineers and technicians to move into specialised, higher-value roles.
Job quality improved through deeper technical responsibilities, closer collaboration with research partners, and greater project ownership – showing what quality middle jobs can look like in a new era.
SMEs have been part of Singapore’s growth, from industrialisation to globalisation. In our next chapter, they must become the kind of places our children will be proud to work in – engines of quality jobs and meaningful careers.
For Mrs Teo, the anxiety runs deeper than her own struggle to find a good role; it is the worry of what her two children will face when they enter the workforce. Unless quality jobs expand beyond the top tier, the next generation may not inherit a future where opportunity is generous, even when they do everything right.
Dr Sahara Sadik is deputy director (research), and Chia Ying is senior researcher at the Institute for Adult Learning.
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