SINGAPORE: The Government announced that the retirement age will go up to 64 and the re-employment age to 69, to take effect by July 1, 2026, Minister of State for Manpower Gan Siow Huang said in parliament on Monday (March 4).
At present, the retirement age is 63, and the re-employment age is 68.
This is the next step as part of the plan to raise the retirement age to 65 and the re-employment age to 70 by 2030, which the government announced in 2019.
In effect, by that year, companies would be required to offer re-employment to their workers until they are age 70.
“Over nine in 10 senior workers who were eligible and wished to continue working were offered re-employment in 2023,” noted Ms Gan, adding:
“To ensure that the next increase is implemented just as smoothly, I encourage employers to start planning early.”
She also underlined that the Manpower Ministry offers additional support to companies for employing older employees and to help them have updated skills.
For example, under MOM’s Part-Time Re-employment Grant, companies may receive as much as S$125,000 to give older workers part-time jobs even past retirement age. The funds may also be utilized for skills training for them.
Commenting on Facebook, Deputy Secretary-General of the National Trade Union Congress Heng Chee How lauded the announcement of the raising of the retirement and redeployment ages, writing:
“This is one of the calls I have consistently made in Parliament, including in my Budget debate speech last week. This is the most impactful way to boost our older worker’s retirement adequacy is to extend their effective working years.
This will provide ample time for both employers and older workers to make necessary preparations.
This is definitely a step in the right direction as we are already halfway through our agreed goals of the retirement and re-employment ages of 65 and 70 respectively for 2030.”
By 2030, one out of every four Singapore citizens will be 65 and older. The country has the third-highest employment rate among nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for workers between the ages of 65 and 69.
In the past five years, the employment rate of this age group has gone up to 48.3 per cent, from 43.3 per cent in 2018.
In the next age bracket, individuals from 55 to 64 years old, the employment rate has also gone up from 66.8 per cent in 2018 to 70 per cent in 2023. /TISG