Relook Link Between Low Wages and Foreign Workers

• Main Author: HOON, Hian Teck
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: Singapore; wages; foreign workers; Asian Studies; Economics; Labor Economics
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1580; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/2579/viewcontent/st_20131127_3.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

He felt that the commonplace idea that the huge inflow of foreign workers in the past decade caused a stagnation and even decline in real wage earnings of Singaporean workers in the bottom half of the income distribution was flawed. He argued that real wage earnings of the median worker actually increased when the number of inflows of foreign workers was reaching its peak. Prof Hoon thus felt that Singapore must now find a means to gear its political and economic institutions to continue to embrace economic openness in the next half-century, in order to be able to deliver good jobs and wages.