On June 28, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong launched the Forward Singapore exercise. The one-year-long exercise will see the Government engaging Singaporeans on six key pillars.

Two pillars - "Empower" (economy and jobs) and "Equip" (education and lifelong learning) - hold particular significance for a group of Singaporeans. These are the gig economy workers or own-account workers, defined by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) as self-employed persons without employees.

According to MOM's reports on the labour force published between 2017 and 2022, the number of own-account workers has been steadily increasing in Singapore since 2018 and they make up approximately one in 10 people in the local labour force.


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Carol Soon and Chew Han Ei are senior research fellows at the Institute of Policy Studies. Neo Yee Win is a research associate and Beverly Tan is a research assistant at the same institute. Their research on own-account workers' digital competences is funded by the Workforce Development Applied Research Fund.

Top photo from Unsplash.