Annual Projected Growth of Freelancers in Infocomms Technology and Media Industries from 2022 to 2025

49 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Communications and Information from 2022 to 2025, what is the annual projected growth of freelancers in the (i) Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and (ii) media industries.

Mrs Josephine Teo: Freelancers, or Own Account Workers (OAWs), form a relatively small part of our workforce. The proportion of OAWs in our resident workforce has remained stable at between 8% and 10% over the past five years. In the Information and Communications (I&C) sector, which includes both ICT and media industries, resident OAWs have more than doubled from 4,000 in 2016 to 8,800 in 2021, or 7.3% of all employed residents in the sector.

Technology has enabled greater flexibilities for working. With changing aspirations of our workforce and business models of media companies, freelancing may be increasingly attractive as a preferred arrangement. There is no established way to project the growth, but we will continue to monitor the trends. We will also continue to support freelancers in maintaining their skills relevance.