More residents doing freelance jobs in Singapore

There were more residents in Singapore who turned to doing freelance jobs as their main form of employment, according to the latest report by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

A total of 211,000 permanent residents and citizens were freelancers last year, slightly up from 210,800 in 2018.

That makes up about 8.8% of the resident workforce last year, down from 9.3% the previous year.

Out of the 211,000, 19,600 said they turned to freelancing as they could not find full-time employment. The top freelance jobs are taxi drivers, private hire drivers and insurance agents.

The MOM report also showed that there were also more workers taking on freelance jobs as a side gig on top of their full-time roles. The number of part-timers also went up, taking up 11.2% of the resident workforce compared to 10.9% in 2018.