Quality of Upcoming New Jobs in Tech and IT Sector

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Communications and Information in view of IDA's announcement of 15,000 vacancies in the tech and IT sector (a) what kind of jobs are these; (b) which companies/industries will these jobs be found; (c) at what level of the organisation hierarchy are these jobs set; and (d) what are the skills required for these jobs.

Madam, the 15,000 vacancies were based on the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA)'s latest annual survey on infocomm manpower for 2014, which is conducted with companies to track the state of infocomm jobs in Singapore. The 15,000 vacancies in 2014 were unchanged from 2013 and translate to an average vacancy rate of 9%. These vacancies were not just from the tech and information technology (IT) sector, but also from companies in other sectors, such as banking and finance, that employ infocomm professionals.

More than two-thirds of these vacancies were for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) or technical specialists in areas, such as development, network and infrastructure, cybersecurity and data analytics. The rest of the vacancies were mainly in sales and marketing and infocomm operation job roles.

The requirements of each job type differ. Development jobs require skills in various programming languages, as well as in emerging areas like agile method and user experience. Cybersecurity, network and infrastructure jobs require relevant industry certifications. Data analytics professionals require skills, such as statistics and machine learning.

Demand for technical specialists has been growing by 6.3% annually from 2011 to 2014. We expect this growth to continue, given Singapore's push towards becoming a Smart Nation.

Madam, I will share more about the new infocomm manpower programmes at the Committee of Supply 2016 debate.