Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, opinions expressed below belong to the author.
Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE), through its SkillsFuture Singapore agency, has just released the 2025 Skills Demand for the Future Economy Report, providing insights into the changes and evolving demands of the local job market.
The announcement was made by Ms Gan Siow Huang, Minister of State at MOE, during the launch event for the report and the new online Jobs-Skills Portal at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre on January 22.
Since its first release in 2021, the goal of the publication has been to evaluate and map in-demand skills and potential career paths, helping businesses plan their hiring strategies and guiding Singaporeans towards the best career outcomes.
You can download the full report here. Meanwhile, our focus will be on its findings regarding the most attractive, highest-growth job roles in Singapore.
Jobs of the future
Out of a total of 1,002 roles, detailed employer demand and salary data were collected for 342 of them, out of which 146 have been highlighted for their growth potential.
Each of them pays a minimum of S$3,300 in gross median salary per month, is in demand by employers and that demand has been growing over time (following the average trend over the past three years).
This means that they are offering a decent starting point from which your career can progress, upgrading to higher roles and better pay later on.
However, thanks to a freely available online dashboard published on the SkillsFuture website, we can filter these jobs further and find those which already pay above the median, which last year was around S$5,500.
As it turns out, more than a third of those growth positions —57 to be exact—offer median monthly salaries of S$6000 or more (up to S$14,900).
They have been divided into four unusual, broad categories, reflecting the current trends:
- Care
- Digital
- Green / Industry 4.0
- and Other
Growth roles with a minimum salary of S$6,000 per month
Some of the highest-paid jobs are found in Singapore’s pride and joy: the maritime sector, with oil and bunker traders, ship charterers and brokers, and marine engineers making between ca. S$10,000 and S$15,000 per month.
Unsurprisingly, general senior roles in strategy, company management, and finance are all close to the top of the list as well.
| Role | Gross median salary | |
| 1 | Oil and bunker trader | S$14,900 |
| 2 | University lecturer | S$13,100 |
| 3 | Insurance services manager | S$12,400 |
| 4 | Strategic planning manager | S$12,300 |
| 5 | Financial services manager | S$10,600 |
| 6 | Marine superintendent (engineer) | S$10,300 |
| 7 | Ship charterer | S$10,200 |
| 8 | Ship broker (e.g. charter or sales & purchase) | S$9,600 |
| 9 | Trade broker | S$9,500 |
| 10 | Company director | S$9,500 |
| 11 | Business development manager | S$9,300 |
| 12 | Merchandising/category manager | S$9,200 |
| 13 | Network, communications and infrastructure manager | S$9,100 |
| 14 | Travel agency manager | S$8,900 |
| 15 | Wholesale trade manager | S$8,900 |
| 16 | Audit manager | S$8,700 |
| 17 | Database architect | S$8,600 |
| 18 | Actuary | S$8,600 |
| 19 | Budgeting and financial accounting manager (including financial controller) | S$8,500 |
| 20 | Environmental officer (public health) | S$8,400 |
| 21 | Quality control/assurance manager | S$8,300 |
| 22 | Transport/technical operations manager (except port/shipping operations) | S$8,300 |
| 23 | Sales manager | S$8,300 |
| 24 | Customer service manager | S$8,100 |
| 25 | Treasury manager | S$8,000 |
| 26 | Insurance underwriter | S$7,800 |
| 27 | Community/country club manager | S$7,700 |
| 28 | Premises and facilities maintenance manager (excluding building security manager) | S$7,700 |
| 29 | Health services manager | S$7,600 |
| 30 | Electronics engineer | S$7,500 |
| 31 | Manufacturing manager | S$7,500 |
| 32 | Financial derivatives dealer | S$7,400 |
| 33 | Financial analyst (e.g. equities analyst, credit analyst, investment research analyst) | S$7,400 |
| 34 | School principal | S$7,200 |
| 35 | Business and financial project management professional | S$7,100 |
| 36 | Instrumentation engineer | S$7,000 |
| 37 | Construction manager | S$7,000 |
| 38 | Marketing manager | S$6,900 |
| 39 | Other education managers (including registrars, deans of education institutions and heads of training institutions) | S$6,800 |
| 40 | General practitioner/physician | S$6,700 |
| 41 | Marine engineer | S$6,700 |
| 42 | Industrial safety engineer | S$6,600 |
| 43 | Medical and pharmaceutical products sales professional | S$6,500 |
| 44 | Business consultant | S$6,500 |
| 45 | Operations research analyst | S$6,500 |
| 46 | Sales professionals (institutional sales of financial products) | S$6,300 |
| 47 | Building architect | S$6,300 |
| 48 | Medical scientist | S$6,300 |
| 49 | Biochemist | S$6,300 |
| 50 | Pharmacologist | S$6,300 |
| 51 | Aged care services manager | S$6,300 |
| 52 | Security manager | S$6,300 |
| 53 | Maintenance planner | S$6,200 |
| 54 | Materials engineer | S$6,200 |
| 55 | Producer (stage, film, television, game, commercial, video and radio) | S$6,100 |
| 56 | Multimedia (including games) developer | S$6,100 |
| 57 | Procurement engineer | S$6,100 |
As usual, there’s no shortage of positions in the tech sector, with network managers and database architects making well over S$8,000 per month—right next to, it has be said, sales managers, actuaries or environmental officers in health institutions.
There is quite some breadth to the list, with well-paying, in-demand jobs found in professions demanding many different skills. So, even if you’re not a techie, an engineer or a doctor, you still have other prosperous career paths open to you.
Plan your career path with the SkillsFuture online tool
An interesting feature of the SkillsFuture portal is the Transition Pathways function, which allows you to plan your career ahead by comparing the necessary skills at your current and future dream jobs, as well as the pay increment you may expect by moving up the ladder.
In addition to showing you the strength of the relationship between them, the application will also inform you of the sort of skills you need in each of these roles, together with titles of relevant courses you may undertake to obtain them before applying for the more desirable position.
This must be the first app allowing for such careful planning, helping all workers to adapt to the changing needs of both their current jobs as well as those they may be hoping to jump to in the future.
You can try it yourself and review the complete list of all 342 job roles under evaluation, together with the interactive tools allowing you to filter through them and lay out your future career transitions on the new Jobs-Skills portal. Good luck.
Featured Image Credit: SkillsFuture SG