Singapore's economy grew faster after the pandemic than before it, but inflation absorbed most of the pay gains: real median gross monthly income rose 1.3% a year from 2019 to 2025, down from 3.4% a year from 2015 to 2019, according to figures the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry gave Parliament last week.

Real gross domestic product grew 3.6% a year in the later period, up from 3.1%, the ministry said in a written reply from Tan See Leng, the minister for energy, trade and industry (energy and industry). For investors in Singapore banks, retailers and real estate investment trusts that depend on household spending, the numbers put a figure on a gap many residents have felt: an economy posting solid headline growth while the typical worker's purchasing power rises slowly.

Growth held up, real pay did not

The reply, published Nov. 4 in answer to a question from Victor Lye, a member of Parliament, said the link between GDP growth and job growth has stayed "broadly intact" over the past decade. Overall employment grew 1.5% a year in 2019 to 2025, almost double the 0.8% pace of 2015 to 2019. Resident employment, which excludes foreign workers, grew 1.1% a year, up from 0.9%.

Wages are where the two periods part ways. Nominal median gross monthly income grew 4.0% a year in 2019 to 2025, slightly faster than the 3.7% recorded in the earlier period, the ministry said in a footnote. But consumer price inflation jumped to an average of 2.7% a year from 0.3%, leaving much less in real terms. The ministry attributed the slowdown in real wage growth to the high inflation that followed the Covid-19 pandemic.

The data are drawn from the Department of Statistics and the Ministry of Manpower. The ministry said it split the decade at 2019 to avoid starting or ending either period in 2020, the year of the pandemic.

The pattern matters for how investors read Singapore's current run of strong headline numbers. The economy grew 5.4% from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2026, slowing from 6.2% in the second quarter, according to advance estimates reported by Bernama. Manufacturing grew 7.5% in the quarter. A strong factory sector, however, has historically done little for resident job counts.

Factories and tech add output, not resident jobs

The ministry's sector table shows where output and resident hiring diverged most between 2015 and 2025. Manufacturing real value-added grew 5.0% a year while resident employment in the sector shrank 1.3% a year, a gap of 6.3 percentage points. Information and communications grew output 9.5% a year against resident job growth of 4.2%, a gap of 5.3 points.

The ministry said both divergences reflect strong productivity growth in those sectors. That fits Singapore's shift toward capital-intensive semiconductor and electronics production, where new plants add large amounts of output with relatively small workforces.

Wholesale and retail trade showed the next-largest gap, with output up 2.8% a year and resident employment down 0.8%. Finance and insurance, the sector most closely watched by foreign investors, grew value-added 5.2% a year and resident employment 3.5%, a gap of 1.7 points, the same as professional services.

Construction output grew just 0.9% a year over the decade, with resident employment down 0.7% a year. Administrative and support services was the only sector where resident jobs grew faster than output: value-added fell 2.2% a year while resident employment rose 1.6%.

Recent labor data show the same split. Advance figures for the third quarter showed hiring picking up while retrenchments rose, as Capital Times reported earlier this month.

A push for income-based measures

Mr. Lye also asked whether the ministry would publish indicators alongside GDP showing how growth feeds into resident employment income, income from Singapore-owned capital and companies abroad, and gross national income. His question stated that growth has become less employment-intensive.

In an oral reply, Dr. Tan did not commit to a new indicator. He said the government already publishes a range of measures beyond GDP, including income earned by full-time employed residents, the operating revenue and nominal value-added of local companies, income residents receive from abroad, and gross national income, all available on the Department of Statistics website.

For markets, the distinction is practical. In the third quarter, wholesale and retail trade together with transportation and storage grew 8.0%, while the group covering accommodation, food services, real estate and other domestic services expanded just 2.1%, according to the advance estimates. Consumer-facing stocks and domestic REITs depend more on real household income than on headline GDP.

The ministry's reply gives no figures for 2026, so it does not show whether real pay has picked up this year. The next checks are the final third-quarter GDP release from the ministry and the Ministry of Manpower's full third-quarter labor market report, which carries wage and productivity detail.