Majority of Singapore Firms Have Moved Roles Abroad Due to AI Adoption, Report Finds
Source: Singapore Business Review
The narrative around AI and Singapore's workforce has mostly been about which jobs will be automated and whether retraining schemes can keep pace. But a new report from global HR platform Remote suggests the more immediate disruption is geographic: over half of Singaporean companies have already relocated...
The narrative around AI and Singapore's workforce has mostly been about which jobs will be automated and whether retraining schemes can keep pace. But a new report from global HR platform Remote suggests the more immediate disruption is geographic: over half of Singaporean companies have already relocated roles to other markets specifically because of artificial intelligence.
According to Remote's 2026 Global Hiring Report, 54% of Singapore firms have moved roles to new markets as a direct result of AI adoption, while 46% expanded into new geographies specifically to access AI-skilled talent. A third (33%) said they expanded abroad to combat local shortages of the right expertise. The pattern points to a labour market where AI is not just displacing jobs but redistributing them across borders faster than most organisations anticipated.
Singapore's experience stands apart from global averages in several telling ways. While 47% of local firms increased domestic hiring efforts — marginally ahead of the 43% global average — only half of Singapore respondents said a talent shortage caused them to miss a key business goal in the past year. That is a striking 22 percentage points below the 72% global average, suggesting that Singapore's deep talent pool and openness to international hiring are cushioning the impact of AI-driven restructuring. The friction is still there — 80% said local talent has become harder to find over the past year, and 82% pointed to unclear or conflicting local regulations as a barrier to cross-border hiring.
The report also captures a clear policy demand signal: 89% of Singapore respondents said they would hire more internationally if it carried the same ease and risk profile as domestic hiring, compared with 79% globally. That gap matters because it suggests regulatory simplification could unlock a significant additional channel for AI talent acquisition at a time when the government is already positioning Singapore as an AI hub through initiatives like the National AI Strategy 2.0 and the recently announced AI Safety Fellowship. The appetite for international talent is there — the question is whether the administrative framework will catch up.
Why it matters for Singapore: Singapore's AI strategy has been largely supply-side — building compute, funding research, attracting data centres. But the Remote data suggests the demand side is already reshaping itself faster than policy can respond. If 54% of firms are moving roles abroad because of AI, the talent strategy conversation can no longer be just about upskilling locals; it has to be about how Singapore makes itself the place where companies want to keep those roles, not relocate them. The 89% demand for frictionless international hiring is a clear signal to policymakers that immigration and labour regulation are now AI policy tools, not just manpower ones.
