Only 1 in 10 Young Singapore Workers Are Engaged: Gallup Study Warns of AI Divide
Source: The Straits Times
Just 10 percent of Singapore workers under 35 are engaged at work, according to the inaugural Singapore Workplace Report 2026 by Gallup and the Singapore Institute of Directors — a figure that exposes a generational disengagement gap three times wider than the global average.
Just 10 percent of Singapore workers under 35 are engaged at work, according to the inaugural Singapore Workplace Report 2026 by Gallup and the Singapore Institute of Directors — a figure that exposes a generational disengagement gap three times wider than the global average. The study, based on polling of roughly 1,000 employees and a roundtable with 33 senior leaders, puts overall Singapore engagement at just 14 percent, well below the Southeast Asian average of 25 percent and the global average of 20 percent.
The report identifies a manager deficit as the root cause: Gallup found that 70 percent of variance in team engagement is attributable to the manager, yet Singapore's corporate culture rarely rewards managers for their ability to coach and develop teams. With 62 percent of listed companies being family-owned, best practices in people management are uneven at best. The result is a workforce where younger employees feel unseen, under-supported, and acutely stressed — disengaged workers are twice as likely to report daily stress and three times as likely to experience daily anger relative to their engaged peers.
The findings carry direct implications for Singapore's AI ambitions. The report flags an "AI Impact Divide" in which 85 percent of leaders are confident in AI's value but very few are optimistic about the workforce's readiness. Employees fear AI will replace their roles, creating resistance that undermines adoption. At the same time, AI is eliminating repetitive entry-level work — the very tasks that have historically helped junior employees build foundational skills. "Technology and disruption — there will be winners and losers," one leader told researchers, "but the benefits would not be distributed evenly."
Why it matters for Singapore: A disengaged workforce cannot execute a national AI transformation. The Gallup-SID data makes clear that Singapore's structural engagement problem — particularly among the under-35 demographic that should be driving AI adoption — represents a real headwind for the government's Smart Nation agenda. Minister of State for Manpower Dinesh Vasu Dash acknowledged at the report's launch that "an engaged workforce accrues to a powerful engine of sustained economic growth." Without fixing the manager-development pipeline, Singapore risks building world-class AI infrastructure while the people needed to run it mentally check out.