NTUC's first job security chief targets two groups as AI disruption reshapes work

Singapore's labour market is at a pressure point. Retrenchments hit their highest quarterly level in nearly six years in Q2 2026, youth unemployment is creeping up, and AI is quietly rewriting what entry-level work looks like. Into that picture steps Caryn Lim, NTUC's first-ever Chief Job Security — a role created to coordinate the labour movement's coverage of the entire "job life cycle", from first job to career switch to re-entry.

In an interview with The Straits Times published on Aug 15, Lim said her focus has settled on two groups: fresh graduates, whom she calls "first-jobbers", and workers over 50, particularly professionals, managers and executives (PMEs). Her worry for the young is discouragement — that a rough start turns into lost hope before a career begins. For older PMEs, the concern is bounce-back: finding work at comparable salaries after retrenchment. The urgency is backed by numbers: 4,500 workers were retrenched in Q2 2026, up from 3,830 in Q1 and the highest quarterly figure since Q4 2020.

The response is structural. NTUC is revamping its AI career coach to use AI to reach more workers at scale, and scaling company training committees (CTCs) — now operating in around 3,800 companies — from single-company projects to cross-sector "prototypes" that solve common industry problems. The direction has government backing: on May Day 2026, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced the Government would work with the labour movement to scale CTCs as part of its promise to "protect every worker" as AI disrupts the economy.

The stakes are measurable. PMEs and technicians formed 64.2 per cent of Singapore's workforce in 2025, up from about 53 per cent in 2015 — and PME skill sets now age faster as the nature of roles in sectors like ICT shifts. NTUC's employment arm e2i placed 32,000 workers in 2024 and about 40,000 in 2025, but placing people is only half the battle; the harder question is whether their skills still match what employers need after AI reshapes the job. Lim also flagged youth unemployment below 30 rising from 5.8 per cent in December 2025 to 6.2 per cent in March 2026, even as MOM attributes part of that to short-term job-hopping.

Why it matters for Singapore: Lim's redefinition of job security — no longer staying in one job forever, but "being able to find the right job for you at the right time" — is the core policy challenge of Singapore's AI transition. As the NTUC AI career coach and CTC network expand, the test for Singapore is whether worker-protection infrastructure can keep pace with AI-driven disruption, and whether retrenched PMEs and discouraged first-jobbers actually land those next good jobs.