SKILLS in areas such as the digital economy, providing care, and Industry 4.0 will experience high demand and become more transferable in the next two years, a report by SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) has said.

The 24 priority skills identified in the report include software design in the digital economy, effective client communication in the care economy, and equipment and systems testing in Industry 4.0.

The skills were identified based on a statistical projection of past trends from 2012 to 2022, and so excluded emerging areas such as in the green economy because of insufficient historical data, the agency said on Friday (Nov 17).

These high-growth priority skills were listed for the first time in the third edition of SSG’s annual Skills Demand for the Future Economy report.

In a rapidly changing skills landscape, SSG’s report aims to help individuals and businesses to identify skills gaps, and to make better, more informed investments in skills, said Minister of State for Education and Manpower Gan Siow Huang at the launch of the report.

Separately, the report cited the green, digital and care economies as key growth areas that would influence the emergence of, and demand for, new skills across industry sectors. The report also tracked how demand is changing for skills in these areas.

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

These areas present both opportunities and challenges, Gan said. For example, technology can overcome manpower constraints, but also displace livelihoods, and sustainability can be a key competitive advantage, but would require significant transformation to achieve.

The report, using a backward-tracking approach of trends, noted that the growth in green skills has been consistent in the past two years; it is in high demand in emerging areas such as agri-food, sustainable finance and carbon management. Demand for skills in sustainable finance and carbon management, in particular, will be pushed up by mandatory climate-related disclosure requirements, said SSG.

The fastest growth has been clocked for three green skills that are highly transferable across sectors and job roles: environmental and social governance, carbon footprint management, and sustainable manufacturing.

On the digital front, high transferability and steady growth in demand were seen for data and artificial intelligence-related skills such as programming and coding, big-data analytics as well as application support and enhancements.

The care economy encompasses healthcare, community care, early-childhood management, social services and adult education. Here, demand has risen for skills that support the provision of holistic care – including volunteer retention and engagement – as well as innovative business models, such as the development of business opportunities.

Demand is also rising for care skills beyond the care economy, such as skills in the delivery of support for mental health and well-being in workplaces, noted the report.

SSG also studied how the composition of job skills in Singapore has changed, based on job posting data from 2012 to 2022.

There has been a rise in employer demand for apps and tools, in line with Singapore’s digitalisation. However, because of the rapid churn in available software solutions, the top 10 in-demand apps and tools have changed significantly in the past decade.

The programming language Python and style sheet languages CSS2 or CSS3, for instance, were in the top 10 in 2022, but not consistently in earlier years.

Business management, data management and production management accounted for the majority of skills in Singapore, with the top 10 skills in each cluster remaining “largely consistent” over the past decade.

The top five in-demand critical core skills – led by communication – were unchanged over the past decade, though there were changes in their ranking.

“Many of the skills we acquire over our work life remain evergreen,” noted Gan, adding that as long as workers continue to upskill and reskill, they can be “reasonably confident” of their prospects, “without worrying too much about skills obsolescence amid the more rapid changes”.

This year’s report also sets out how workers can make transitions in six job roles which accounted for three-quarters of job postings from 2019 to 2022. The six jobs are enrolled nurses, courseware developers, data analysts, security engineers, process engineers and business development managers.

Not every job can be entered into with a single transition; some may require multiple steps, such as getting an adjacent job and then upskilling, SSG said.

The report also provides tips for career and skills development planning, using tools on government websites. For the first time, SSG has released the data used in its analyses, to help individuals and partners get more personalised information, while crowdsourcing new insights and perspectives on the data.

Gan said beyond supporting workers and companies to transform, the report is also an open call for industry leaders and practitioners to partner SSG, to enhance Singapore’s shared understanding of the evolving skills needs.

This week, SSG and the Ministry of Trade and Industry convened the first Green Skills Committee meeting, to discuss skills development in a sustainable, lower-carbon economy.

Meanwhile, institutes of higher learning are enhancing the accessibility, quality and industry relevance of their continuing education and training offerings in the three growth economies, Gan added.

SSG-supported green courses at institutes of higher learning have doubled to about 470 this year, from approximately 250 last year.

The agency has also been working with training providers to ramp up the number of SkillsFuture Career Transition Programmes, which now stands at 180, and to refresh the SkillsFuture Series of short, industry-relevant training programmes, Gan said.