Singapore Faces a Grim Labor Future as Population Ages Rapidly

While Japan had the biggest slump in its workforce in Asia over the last 10 years, Singapore has the most to fear from an aging population over the next two decades.

The city state will face a double whammy: a shrinking workforce and slower progress than Asian neighbors in getting more people into the labor market. According to a new study from Oxford Economics, Singapore’s labor supply growth – after accounting for changes to the participation rate – will shrink by 1.7 percentage points in the 10 years through 2026 and by 2.5 percentage points in the decade after that. That’s the worst of a dozen economies in a report by Louis Kuijs, the Hong Kong-based head of Asia economics at Oxford.