Impact of Rise of AI on Gender Employment Gap

91 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Manpower what measures are being taken to address the impact of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) on the gender employment gap given that women's jobs are at disproportionately higher risk of being replaced by AI as compared to their male counterparts.

Dr Tan See Leng: Mr Patrick Tay and Mr Andre Low have filed three Parliamentary Questions relating to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workforce. This reply will address these related questions together.

As a small and labour-constrained economy, AI presents opportunities for us to overcome our limitations to grow our economy and improve livelihoods. While we cannot fully predict the scope and scale of AI's impact on the workforce, the Government is taking active steps to shape it positively, to create better jobs and a more productive labour force. The National AI Strategy 2.0 has hence set out Singapore's ambition and commitment to harness the potential of AI by expanding the pool of AI creators and practitioners and uplifting the AI capabilities of the workforce.

To ensure that AI adoption leads to good jobs for Singaporeans, we need businesses to couple AI adoption with investments in their workforce. Today, companies can tap on initiatives, such as the Productivity Solutions Grant, SMEs Go Digital and the newly introduced Enterprise Compute Initiative to adopt AI transformation, ranging from off-the-shelf to tailored solutions. In tandem with support for AI adoption, the Government also set aside over $400 million for the Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package to provide greater support for companies to embark on workforce transformation, including job redesign efforts. In addition, we have set aside around $200 million for the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Company Training Committee Grant to help companies enhance business capabilities in tandem with worker outcomes.

At the same time, we need workers to be proactive and adaptable in upgrading themselves to take on new or redesigned tasks arising from AI adoption. The Government will support Singaporeans to acquire relevant skills through schemes, such as the Career Conversion Programmes and the TechSkills Accelerator, which support workers to transit into roles, such as software and cloud professionals and AI engineers.

To prepare young graduates for career success in an AI era, the Government has put in place a mix of upskilling programmes, work-based learning and career guidance initiatives. Under the National AI Strategy 2.0, for example, we are scaling up programmes, like the AI Apprenticeship Programme, to boost our pipeline of young AI practitioners. Beyond the inclusion of AI-related modules within the curriculum at our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to build up students' digital literacies, we have also been evolving our education system to place a greater focus on soft skills that continue to be important for career success in an AI era. In addition, we have stepped-up support for career planning through IHLs and Workforce Singapore's career guidance efforts, to journey with them in working towards their career goals. In the near term, we have introduced the GRaduate Industry Traineeships (GRIT) Programme to provide opportunities for young graduates to gain work experience that companies may put a greater premium on. These efforts are part of a holistic suite of support for young graduates so that they can start their careers on a good footing.

As for AI's impact on the gender employment gap, we have yet to see evidence supporting the hypothesis that AI will disproportionately affect female employment in Singapore. Female employment outcomes have continued to improve over the past decade amid the progress of AI and other digital technologies. Since 2014, the gap in employment rate between male and female aged 25 to 64 has narrowed from 18.8 percentage points to 10.5 percentage points in 2024. The unadjusted gender pay gap¹ has also narrowed from 16.3% in 2018 to 14.3% in 2023. When we compare men and women with similar characteristics in age, education, occupation, industry, and usual hours worked, the adjusted gender pay gap in 2023 is lower at 6.0%.

These outcomes have been supported by a wide suite of jobs and skills initiatives that the Government has offered to boost women's employment outcomes. In particular, Workforce Singapore's HerCareer initiative is a focused effort to support women with employment facilitation programmes and services so that they can better access good jobs and build up relevant skillsets. In addition, flexible work arrangements are a key enabler to support women to work. In this regard, the Government and tripartite partners have launched the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests, which took effect on 1 December last year.

The Government will continue to study the impact of AI on our workforce and consider ways to help businesses and workers seize new opportunities arising from AI while ensuring inclusive growth.