MOM will be raising the qualifying salary for Employment Pass (EP) renewals and introducing a points system from Sep 23

[Wd40]

the salary benchmarks have been updated: https://www.mom.gov.sg/-/media/mom/docu ... hmarks.pdf

Wow! Just look at Banking and Financial services age 45 $17700 for 65th percentile!

I think banks should just hive off their IT departments into a seperate pte ltd company and register it as information technology provider.

Even the salary thresholds for the IT industry are very steep. I worked at Citibank's IT company for many years and we had about 7000 Indian developers that earn below the required levels for 20 Compass points. Since they also do not have top-100 level education, this will be an exodus.

On the positive side, I entered Singapore just after the financial crisis in 2008/2009 when they laid off too many people, companies/gov lowered the thresholds to get in. I was hired by Citi based on a 20 minutes phone call while they normally had 4+ rounds of interviews. I am sure that Compass can become an opportunity (over time) for well-educated professionals from certain jurisdictions when they realize that they went too far and the big firms are packing for Hong Kong.

You see the C1-salary-benchmarks.pdf has the column "Sector" and not Occupation. I think they are going to treat IT jobs in banks as "Banking and Financial Services" sector and not "Info-Communication Technology" sector.

IT threshold is 11,900 vs 17,700 for banking. IT and Operations guys dont get paid as much as front office people. MAS and MOM want to reserve the financial services jobs which are sought after by Singaporeans, for Singaporeans, that is a good intention. However, IT is not an area sought after by Singaporeans and there is a massive talent shortage. Foreigners are filling this gap and while you are right that there may be cases where not the best talent is hired, the compass framework already addresses that.

Benchmarking should be done by occupation and not sector. Lumping IT and Operations jobs in banks along with front office jobs, would be grave mistake. I hope better sense prevails eventually.

[nelyanne]

I'm wondering, what would be the long-term impact on the country? How many companies will shut down as a result of this, and how many Singaporeans will lose jobs because of this? To what extent will Singapore remain an attractive place to start a business? How many foreigners will move out of Singapore? Will MRT become less crowded, because the only foreigners left will be those who can afford a car/taxi? So many questions...

[malcontent]

I'm wondering, what would be the long-term impact on the country? How many companies will shut down as a result of this, and how many Singaporeans will lose jobs because of this? To what extent will Singapore remain an attractive place to start a business? How many foreigners will move out of Singapore? Will MRT become less crowded, because the only foreigners left will be those who can afford a car/taxi? So many questions...

I believe the demand by companies to setup here exceeds the supply of land and human resources. In the past they would simply make space and import more resources to grab that demand, but as things get more saturated, they now must shift to quality over quantity. I’ve said it before, the screws only get turned one direction here… tighter. It should not come as a surprise to anyone who is paying attention, it is a small island after all.