Which languages and industries could earn you the most money in Singapore?
- Which languages pay the most on average?
- What is the most popular language for jobs in Singapore?
- Which industry has the highest paying salaries for foreign language jobs?
- Which industries offer the highest salaries for foreign speakers?
- What are the highest-rated companies for worker satisfaction in Singapore?
- Conclusion: Is it worth learning a foreign language for a career in Singapore?
When it comes to learning a second language, some people choose to learn for the adventure of moving to a new country or simply to upskill a new talent – but did you know that in an expat haven like Singapore, a different language can actually improve your salary prospects?
We investigated job vacancies asking for foreign languages in Singapore and compared them to jobs that ask for the local languages of Tamil, Mandarin, and Malay. As seen in the data, the truth is that careers in alternative languages often topped these roles for average salary and worker satisfaction.
In our analysis, we looked at which languages offer the highest-paying jobs, the industries paying the most for foreign languages as well as the highest-rated companies overall. So, here’s exactly what we found and why you should consider learning a second language for a career in Singapore.
Which languages pay the most on average?
Being a local language, it’s not surprising that Tamil is the highest-paid language overall, with an average salary of 41,280 SGD. What is shocking, though, is how many foreign language roles were not far behind with their average salaries.
As you can see over the top 12 of average salaries in Singapore, when it comes to learning a language, Japanese, Spanish, French, Hindi, or Italian may be the best choices, as the average salaries in these vocations all fall above 38,000 SGD.
In fact, careers requiring Mandarin, English and Malay were paid less than these foreign language choices on average. Time to start looking into a Japanese tutor, possibly?
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What is the most popular language for jobs in Singapore?
Looking at which foreign language jobs have the most vacancies available, two local languages came first. With over 15,000 English-speaking job vacancies and almost 7,000 Mandarin-speaking jobs available, these native languages offer the most significant number of roles. If you want to improve your professional business language, investing in an English tutor can help you take advantage of these opportunities.
With foreign languages in mind, there were 1,725 Japanese-speaking jobs (but these are often higher-paid, as seen in the previous data). So, if you are looking to learn a foreign language, it’s good to know that Japanese takes up 52% of the foreign language opportunities, French accounts for 18% and German for 16%.
Which industry has the highest paying salaries for foreign language jobs?
When it comes to the highest paying salaries for foreign languages (not including English, Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil) you’ll want to find yourself in a Trade or Construction role, where the average salary is over 55,000 SGD.
What else is there? Following closely behind with an average annual salary of 50,000 SGD are Creative & Design jobs, whilst slightly lower are IT roles at a rate of 45,000 SGD. It’s worth noting that these are all above-average salaries in Singapore, even though they’re in a foreign language. As we can see from the first data set, the highest average salary overall for any spoken language is 41,300 SGD.
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Which industries offer the highest salaries for foreign speakers?
Looking deeper into jobs for those speaking the top four best-paid languages (Tamil, Japanese, Spanish, and French), we can see that the highest-paying languages correlate with the industries with the best salaries. IT comes in the top three, with the highest average being 74,000 SGD in Spanish, 50,200 SGD in Japanese, and 41,900 SGD in French.
If that’s not your sector choice, look to the Hospitality & Catering industries in Tamil, Spanish, and French, as these go up to as high as 50,000 SGD. Other high-paid choices in these foreign languages include Creative & Design jobs, too.
What are the highest-rated companies for worker satisfaction in Singapore?
When job searching, it’s always good to know which companies pay the most, but what about how they treat their employees? Luckily, we’ve found that there are some clear leaders when it comes to job satisfaction.
The technology industry appears most frequently in the highest-rated businesses, with 65% of the companies with the highest satisfaction coming from tech.
To get specific, if you’re looking for jobs in technology, search through vacancies at companies like PayPal, KnowBe4, iEnergizer, Everise, and NVIDIA, which all rank over 4.6 out of 5 stars in satisfaction ratings.
Wondering what other sectors to browse? Manufacturing companies also appear in the top ten for highest satisfaction, including Henkel and Porsche being highly rated by workers.
Conclusion: Is it worth learning a foreign language for a career in Singapore?
So, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that learning a second language in Singapore may benefit you more than if you stayed with a career in a local language. And, there’s no doubt that investing your time in a new online tutor just might be worth your time.
Whilst the local language of English in Singapore leads heavily for the greatest number of jobs with a substantial 15,000 available, it isn’t always the highest paid – in fact, foreign languages are often higher up.
And, if you want to branch out into a new industry, look into Construction, Creative, or IT careers, as these top the list for the highest-paid foreign language jobs in Singapore. Not to mention Technology roles, which have the highest worker satisfaction overall.
Even though Tamil is the highest-paid language on average in Singapore, careers in Japanese, Spanish and French all beat the other three local languages of English, Mandarin, and Malay for average salary. Even Italian and Hindi come up on top too. So, expanding your language expertise may see you with even more opportunity.
When it comes to learning another language, there’s more to it than perfecting the skill just to be bilingual. As we’ve seen, being multilingual can leave you with more career and salary prospects in Singapore, so it can definitely be worth your time to explore a Spanish, French or Japanese tutor. You’ll find countless online language courses if you’re prepared to finally take that leap for your career – and wallet!
Methodology
Statistics on the number of language-speaking jobs across Singapore, alongside the sectors and average wage, were sourced from the job search engine Adzuna. Glassdoor was used to collect worker satisfaction ratings.
A foreign language is defined as any language that is not Tamil, Mandarin, English or Malay.
Data is accurate as of the 31st of October 2023.
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