Will I Make A Lot of Money If I’m Working In The Infocomm (ICT) Sector?

In its Jobs Vacancies Report released in Apr 2021, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) highlighted that the demand for Information and Communications (ICT) professionals rose in the recent 5 years. In an earlier post, I had explained how the government has diverted resources to build up the ICT sector for the past 2 decades, with companies ramping up their digital capabilities, making it one of the industries that is least affected by the pandemic and expected to take off when the economy recovers.

In the same report, it was cited that employers were prepared to pay more to attract ICT talents, with the minimum salary increasing to $5,000. This amount is markedly higher than the median pay of Singaporeans at around $3,500. It is no wonder that those of us who are actively seeking employment are considering taking the plunge into the ICT sector.

Before I answer the question of whether workers in the ICT sector earned a lot more, there’s one interesting point I would like to raise, which would address the question of why the ICT sector has such a high demand for talents.

The Drive to Reskill and Upskill for ICT Sector

While it’s true that both the government and employers were pushing for strengthening the digital capabilities of businesses, it takes 2 hands to clap. When the government realised the usual pipeline of diploma and degree graduates weren’t going to fill the demand, they opened up the avenue for mid-career professionals to switch into the ICT sector.

That “opening of tap” took off when SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) formed and rolled out the SkillsFuture Series. Unlike the WSQ courses we had grown familiar with, SkillsFuture Series focused on 8 emerging areas, like Data Analytics and Advanced Manufacturing, to target working profesionals and get them skilled in those areas. Approval procedures from SSG were streamlined to allow training providers to be more flexible and roll out courses faster in response to the changing demands.

All stops were pulled when SSG, together with its new parent MOE, got all the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) from ITEs to Universities, to start offering courses to working professionals. especially in the 8 emerging areas. Those that didn’t have such a centre had to set up one within months from the formation of SSG.

Despite all these efforts, the take up rates of these courses were mixed. Data analytics and digital marketing were selling like hotcakes, while those that were heavy in technical knowledge frequently faced course cancellations.

Read More: 2021 is the year for SGUnited Skills and SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways – Company Training.

SGUnited Skills & SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways Programme Budget 2021

The Tech-Averse Singaporeans

This phenomenon is most obvious when I did a search on SkillsFuture Singapore’s (SSG) training portal for the SGUnited Skills (SGUS). Among the most popular courses, only 5 out of 20 were tech-related. Conversely, all of the courses that were least viewed were tech-related or had tech-related modules. This meant that Singaporeans who were not in the ICT sector were unwilling to switch to the ICT sector, even when the reskilling programmes were heavily subsidised.

This attitude had been around even before the pandemic. When I was participating in roadshows organised by SSG, the majority of the people turned me away when I told them my school was focused on data science and cybersecurity, or they would just skip my booth entirely. For those whom I managed to interact with, they expressed skepticism about how someone from the non ICT sector could make the jump.

Most interestingly, many of them would say something along the line, “Tech jobs pay well, but…”

I had been focusing on what they said after the “but”. Only recently did I ask myself, does a tech worker really get paid that well?

How Much Does A Worker In The ICT Sector Earn?

As usual, I went to the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) statistics website to do some digging. I managed to download a table called “Employed Residents Aged Fifteen Years And Over By Gross Monthly Income From Work (Excluding Employer Cpf), Industry And Sex, June 2029” (MOM revamped their website on 1 Apr and removed access to many statistics they used to provide; Table 30 was one of them).

In layman terms, the table looked at the number of full time workers in each industry and at every income bracket. The table looked something like this:

The original table looked ugly and I did some shuffling (while analysing the table for another post). The industries that were not in bold were sub-industries of “Services”. Since there were 13 sub-sectors under the Services industries, it was not worthwhile to look at that, which was why I shifted it down to the last row. 

The data in the original table was also presented in absolute number. Therefore, to investigate the pay distribution within each sector, I took the number at each pay bracket and converted to the percentage of workers in the pay bracket as compared to the whole of the industry. For example, 6% of the workers in the Accommodation & Food Services sector received under $500 a month.

p/s: To find out why the industries were sorted in this manner, keep a look out for my next post answering which industries is worth switching into, in salary terms.

However, to answer the question, “How much does a tech worker earn?”, I zoomed into the ICT row and applied a heat map to the data.

In this heat map, the higher the percentage, the redder the hue in the cell.

Excluding the 14% who earned over $12,000 (which collapsed a lot of income brackets into 1 category), ICT workers were mostly paid $3,000 – $3,999 (15%), $4,000 – $4,999 (13%) and $5,000 – $5,999 (10%). Together, workers from these 3 income brackets made up about 40% of the industry.

Income Distribution of ICT Sector Not Much Different from National Distribution

This distribution is mostly in line with the national distribution, in which most of the workers’ pay clustered between $2,500 – $5,999. However, there were more people who earned more than $2,500 in the ICT sector, compared to the national level. Similarly, 32% of the workers at the national level were found in the $3,000 – $5,999 income bracket, vs 40% of the ICT workers.

While the difference isn’t great, it is still obvious that ICT workers generally earned more than the average Singaporean.

To look at this from another perspective, 80% of the ICT workers earned more than $3,000, while nationally, the wage floor for the top 80% earners is somewhere between $1,500 to $1,999.

Why do ICT Workers Earn More?

Thanks to tech celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, there is a misconception that tech workers earn a lot to live a high life, and that the tech industry is intrinsically a high-paying job. 

In Singapore, most ICT workers have a minimum qualification of diploma and above, of whom have a starting pay above $2,500. Conversely, the national statistics covered workers who had lower qualification and therefore received lower pay.

Additionally, the bottom 20% earners in the ICT sector most likely played non-tech roles, which may or may not be diploma holders and above.

The Way To Right-Skill Yourself to A High Paying ICT Job

Therefore, we should not naively think that we can simply increase our pay by just snaring a job in the ICT sector. 

For those with holding post-secondary qualification, you still need to take on tech-related courses to move laterally into the tech sector. This can be done by taking up short courses, depending on how much prior knowledge and experience you had in the area.

For those with lower qualifications, you will have to take a course that’s not only tech-related, but also help elevate your minimum qualification to diploma and above. 

Tech workers who do not have a minimum qualification of diploma is rare, but not impossible. There could be people who did not obtain such academic qualification, but would have sufficient knowledge in the ICT sector. Many journalists cited MOM from the Jobs Vacancies Report saying that qualifications are not the main consideration. The keyword was “main”. Additionally, there was a second point that stated “qualifications get the candidate the interview”. This meant that Singapore’s labour market is still far from being “qualification-neutral”.

As such, candidates with plenty of experience but lacking the academic qualification will most likely still be required by their HR to “just take a diploma course” that is recognised by the company.

In continuing education perspective, this is how people will move into the ICT sector:

Everything is a Spectrum

Before I end this post, I would like to play the devil’s advocate and point out that it’s not all rosy (in terms of salary) in the ICT sector.

Remember the quote at the start of this post from the Jobs Vacancies Report? We should remember that the ICT sector encompass a variety of jobs. While employers may be willing to pay $5,000 starting pay for “software, web & multimedia” and “system analysts”, this may not be the case for Cybersecurity operators, who were also highlighted in the report as “emerging”, but saw job vacancies a quarter of that of the “software, web & multimedia” positions.

This also explained why in the ICT sector’s salary heat map, almost half of the workers earned below $5,000.

It is also easy to be enamored by the red cell at the far right of the heat map that indicated 14% of ICT workers earned more than $12,000 a month. First, they represented the top of the pyramid, populated by those who had many years of experience. Secondly, it was many income brackets collapsed into 1. We don’t know if many of the 14% were clustered just above the $12,000. Neither do we know the salary of the highest earner.

The only thing for sure was that 86% of them earned less that $12,000, with almost 2/3 earning less than $7,000. Mid-career switchers may start with a higher pay than the fresh graduates, but the amount won’t be too far off. I would say it would be on the higher end of the $3,000 – $5,999 spectrum (where almost 40% of workers are) for degree holders, and somewhere in the middle of that spectrum for diploma holders.

Parting Words

If you have a diploma qualification or higher, your pay is most likely among the 32% of Singaporeans earning between $3,000 – $5,999. While 40% of ICT workers also fall into this bracket, the proportion also dropped like the national level as we move up the income level. The only group of Singaporeans who would see their pay jump when they switch into the ICT sector would be the ones with lower qualifications.

If that’s the case, what’s with the push for Singaporeans to move into the ICT sector?

As I had analysed in my other post, the demand for skills in the Information and Communication industry is expected to grow even further, as companies digitalise and Singapore gets more connected to the rest of the world. The government is investing resources into this area so that we could serve the world in high tech, high value add sectors.

Skills to Have in 2021 to Overcome The Economic Downturn (And What Courses To Take)

In human speak, it means more job security and less fear of losing your jobs.

Already, we saw the ICT sector weathering through the pandemic very well. The number of jobs lost was significantly lower than that of the F&B and MICE sectors that rely heavily on tourism. With more companies realising the importance of embracing digital capabilities, the ICT sector will only see more growth as we emerge from the downturn.

To ride the upcoming wave, you can revamp your Skills Passport, which would up your job search game when the economy recovers. If you had been in a sector that is less tech-focused, you can always consider the range of career-switching preparation programmes by SkillsFuture Singapore and Workforce Singapore.

I had compiled a list of top SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways – Company Training (SGUP) and SGUnited Skills (SGUS) programmes for 2021. With a course duration of 6 – 9 months, you would graduate with new skills in the ICT sector, ready to embark on the economy recovery, which is widely expected to happen in the later half of 2021.

Read More: What’s in store for jobseekers in 2021 under the SGUnited scheme?

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Till then, stay fighting!

If you’re actively looking for a job, you can also make use of another SkillsFuture Singapore initiative, Skills Passport. It can be found on the MySkillFuture portal, where you can send your prospective employers digital (and secure) copies of your academic qualifications and training certificates. Read more on how you can make use of Skills Passport to give your job search a boost.