New structural gaps are appearing in the workforce even as economy continues to grow: Ng Chee Meng - The Straits Times

Singapore's labour chief has looked at the workforce and identified "new structural gaps", which is the phrase you reach for when "layoffs" is off-message and "the economy is doing relatively well" needs company in the same sentence. Ng Chee Meng put a number on it: retrenchments spiked to 4,620 in the second quarter of 2026. Growth on one side of the ledger, 4,620 on the other, and a podium in the middle. Nobody at the launch appears to have found the arrangement strange, which is itself the most remarkable thing about the whole affair.

The remedy is an NTUC and KPMG collaboration that will establish a programme to help companies with "workforce transformation and AI adoption". Do read that twice. The union and the consultancy have combined forces so that firms may be assisted in the delicate business of adopting the technology that is currently doing the restructuring. It is like hiring a sommelier for a house fire. Meanwhile "structural gaps" does an enormous amount of work — a gap is a hole with a decent suit on, and this one is opening in the space between a growing economy and a payslip.

And note the verb tense: restructuring from AI "could be one factor" — could, one, factor. That is the sound of an institution keeping its options open while 4,620 people find theirs have quietly closed. No culprit named, no mechanism specified, no number attached to the AI share of the damage — just a programme, a partnership and a launch. Growth is not the problem, we are told; the problem is the shape of what growth now leaves behind. The economy will continue to grow, the gaps will continue to be structural, and another collaboration will be announced to help companies adopt the thing causing it.