Immigration and the Foreign Workforce
Singapore runs two connected but different systems. Immigration admits people for settlement as permanent residents (PRs) and eventually citizens. The foreign-workforce system admits people temporarily under work passes tied to an employer, occupation, sector, or salary tier. A professional on an Employment Pass, a construction Work Permit holder, a migrant domestic worker, a PR engineer, and a new citizen are therefore not one legal or statistical category. Their ability to remain, change jobs, bring family, receive subsidies, buy housing, or participate politically differs substantially.
As at June 2025, Singapore's usual-resident population comprised 3.66 million citizens, 0.54 million PRs, and 1.91 million non-residents. The population authority attributed most recent non-resident growth to Work Permit holders supporting construction and infrastructure, followed by migrant domestic workers (NPTD, accessed Aug 2026). MOM separately counted 1.6357 million work-pass holders in December 2025, including 316,900 migrant domestic workers (MOM, accessed Aug 2026). These figures have different reference dates and scopes and must not be treated as parts of a single same-date total; current pass counts and quota values are preserved in foreign workforce statistics.
Settlement and temporary presence
Singapore’s official population framework separates residents—citizens and permanent residents—from non-residents, while MOM reports foreign workers by pass type and manages them through a distinct foreign-workforce framework; the categories therefore describe legal and statistical status, not whether someone is physically present or socially significant (National Population and Talent Division, accessed Aug 2026; MOM, accessed Aug 2026).
Citizenship is nationality. PR is indefinite immigration status subject to matters such as a valid re-entry permit for travel. Work passes authorise a defined form of employment and are generally temporary. Citizens and PRs together form the resident population used in many official statistics; non-residents include work-pass holders, migrant domestic workers, students, and dependants. “Resident” in an employment survey may therefore mean citizen plus PR, while the everyday phrase “people living in Singapore” may include non-residents as well.
The path from a work pass to PR and citizenship exists but is discretionary and never automatic. Time spent working, salary, or tax paid does not create a legal entitlement to PR; see pr and citizenship. Conversely, most foreign workers are recruited for temporary labour needs and do not follow a settlement track. Calling every non-resident an “immigrant” can obscure this policy distinction, while calling temporary workers absent from the resident denominator “not residents” does not mean they are physically absent or socially irrelevant.
Pass tiers and policy controls
The main pass tiers are described in work passes. Employment Passes (EPs) cover professionals and managers and are controlled mainly through age-adjusted qualifying salaries, the COMPASS assessment, and fair-hiring requirements; EPs have no numerical Dependency Ratio Ceiling or levy. S Passes cover associate professionals and technicians and face a qualifying salary, a monthly levy, and a sector sub-quota. Work Permits cover sector-specific semi-skilled and lower-wage work and are controlled by approved source countries, occupation and sector rules, quotas, and tiered levies. Migrant domestic workers use a distinct Work Permit regime tied to household employment.
MOM's framework states that employers generally must advertise an EP or S Pass role on MyCareersFuture and fairly consider candidates before applying, subject to exemptions. Salary and COMPASS thresholds are intended to make skilled foreign hires complementary rather than simply cheaper, while the S Pass and Work Permit controls directly limit numbers (MOM, accessed Aug 2026). Passing one condition does not satisfy the others: a candidate who clears a salary floor is not guaranteed a pass, and an eligible candidate cannot be hired if the employer lacks quota where quota applies.
Dependency Ratio Ceilings and levies
A Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) is the maximum share of a firm's total workforce that may be Work Permit and S Pass holders. In August 2026 the overall ceiling ranges from 35% in services and 60% in manufacturing to 75% in marine shipyard and 83.3% in construction and process. Within that ceiling, S Pass holders are capped at 10% of total workforce in services and 15% in the other listed sectors (MOM, accessed Aug 2026). These are employer-sector rules, not national claims that a given percentage of all workers may be foreign.
The denominator also requires care. Local employees count toward foreign-worker entitlement through CPF payroll records only when they meet the applicable Local Qualifying Salary rules; lower-paid part-time workers may count fractionally. The total workforce used for quota calculation then combines the recognised local count with issued S Passes and Work Permits. Quota arithmetic rounds and sector classification matter, and special source-country or occupation sub-quotas can bind before the overall DRC. Employers also pay a levy for each S Pass or Work Permit holder, often at rates that rise by tier or differ by skill status. The levy is an employer charge and should not be described as the worker's income tax or deducted from salary as though it were one.
MOM says DRCs provide a quantity limit given infrastructure and social capacity, link foreign-worker access to maintaining a local core, and encourage productivity and job redesign; levy revenue supports programmes including local upskilling and productivity measures (MOM, accessed Aug 2026). Firms that fabricate “phantom” local employees to inflate quota commit an offence. A high DRC does not mean a firm is entitled to fill it regardless of every other pass, source, housing, safety, or sector requirement.
Non-Traditional Source Occupation List expansion from September 2026
From 1 September 2026, MOM added eight occupations to the Non-Traditional Source Occupation List (NTS-OL). The additions cover food services (butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers; food or drink stall assistants; kitchen assistants; waiters), air transportation (cabin attendants), and social services/early childhood care (babysitters or infant caregivers, educarers, and teacher aides) (MOM, NTS Occupation List, checked 5 September 2026). The NTS-OL is a restricted Work Permit pathway for approved non-traditional source countries; it is not a general opening for every employer or occupation.
Employers using the expanded list must remain within the 8% NTS sub-Dependency Ratio Ceiling and pay each NTS Work Permit holder a fixed monthly salary of at least S$2,000. They must also meet role-specific conditions: for example, food-service employers need the relevant Singapore Food Agency licence, cabin-attendant employers need a valid CAAS-issued Singapore Air Operator Certificate or Foreign Operator’s Permit with scheduled services to or from Singapore, and childcare employers need a valid Early Childhood Development Centre licence or appointment under the ECDA ChildMinding Pilot (MOM, accessed Aug 2026). The expansion should therefore be read as a tightly bounded manpower-shortage response alongside local-hiring, productivity, wage, quota, levy, and work-pass controls—not as a change from temporary work permits to settlement rights.
Why Singapore relies on foreign labour
Singapore has a small, ageing citizen population, sustained low fertility, and a labour market spanning global finance and technology through construction, care, cleaning, manufacturing, shipping, and food services. Foreign workers supply specialised skills and networks, cover labour-intensive jobs with limited local supply, support care in private households, and let major infrastructure programmes proceed. The model is also a deliberate economic strategy: openness helps attract global firms and regional functions, while pass criteria are adjusted to keep local capability and wages central.
The headline growth since the pandemic requires context. Between 2021 and 2025, Work Permit holders accounted for 60% of the increase in non-residents, about half of that Work Permit increase being construction workers; migrant domestic workers accounted for another 13%. The government attributed this to post-COVID backfilling, delayed construction, expanded housing and projects such as Changi Terminal 5, and growing care needs. It also noted that a 2021 base makes the increase look larger because border restrictions had depressed the starting number (NPTD parliamentary reply, accessed Aug 2026). This explanation does not make growth permanent or costless; it identifies the composition and period.
Social and political debate
The policy trade-off is openly contested. Supporters emphasise business formation, essential services, infrastructure delivery, tax revenue, skills transfer, and a larger base of jobs than the resident workforce could sustain alone. Critics and worried residents focus on competition for jobs and promotions, wage bargaining at the lower end, housing and transport demand, unequal workplace treatment, dependence on low-cost labour, migrant-worker living conditions, and whether social integration keeps pace. Effects differ by pass tier and industry; evidence about construction labour cannot simply answer a question about professional hiring.
Government policy responds with citizen-priority benefits, selective PR and citizenship intake, rising pass salaries, COMPASS, job-advertising and anti-discrimination enforcement, sector quotas, levies, local wage conditions, and integration programmes. In its 2026 population policy statement, the government said foreign labour remained necessary but that it would watch non-resident growth so citizens remain the population majority; it also reiterated that the total population would remain significantly below the old 6.9-million planning figure in 2030 (NPTD, accessed Aug 2026). The 6.9 million figure was a planning scenario from the 2013 Population White Paper, not a binding target or an immigration quota.