Oral Answer by Mr Tan Chuan-Jin, Acting Minister for Manpower, to Parliamentary Question on Establishing a National Data Bank for Salary Ranges

1. The Ministry of Manpower collects and publishes a wide range of labour market statistics, including wage data. For example, we conduct and publish the results of the annual Occupational Wage Survey¹ (OWS), which provides representative data on the wages of full-time employees in over 300 common occupations.
2. To make it easier for employers and workers to use and understand these data, what we have done is to recently launch a new suite of interactive benchmarking tools on our website. These tools allow employers and workers to benchmark themselves against national or industry norms on a variety of indicators, such as wages, staff turnover and employment conditions. For example, employers and employees can use the benchmarking tool to find out whether the wage that they are paying or receiving for a certain job is near the 25th percentile, median, or 75th percentile of the industry range.
3. In general, wages should be determined by the market in a flexible manner, taking into account a multitude of factors such as productivity, the demand and supply of skills, and economic conditions. Therefore information and awareness will play a very important part in this process. Hence the development of these benchmarking tools will make a big difference to both employers and workers to have easy access to reliable, relevant and timely labour market information.
4. I do strongly encourage members in this house, employers and employees to use these tools that are made available on the website.

¹ The OWS is conducted by the Central Provident Fund Board on behalf of the Ministry of Manpower.