Leaders must elevate their talent strategies to an equal, if not greater, imperative than technology adoption

[SINGAPORE] Entry-level information and communications technology (ICT) job postings in Singapore have fallen 38 per cent between 2022 and 2025, marking the sharpest decline among all occupation groups since the post-Covid peak.

New research from Accenture, released on Monday (May 11), indicated that while the volume of junior tech roles is contracting, the requirements for these positions are undergoing a “structural upgrading”.

The decline is primarily affecting roles built on routine, repeatable and rules-based tasks, which are being compressed by automation.

“Jobs are not disappearing. Entry-level postings rebounded 8 per cent in 2025, but what is being demanded has fundamentally changed,” researchers from the consulting firm said.

Accenture’s report drew on data from its Talent Reinventors research, which surveyed 1,320 C-suite executives and 4,560 employees across 20 industries and 12 countries between August and September 2025.

For its survey of entry-level workers here, Accenture polled 518 young Singaporeans in January 2026, of whom 141 respondents were resurveyed after the Budget 2026 in February to capture their views of the country’s national artificial intelligence ambition.

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The report also took in the views of 70 technology leaders in Singapore from a range of industries, and those of nine C-suites from the country’s public and private sectors.

Shift towards specialised skills

Despite the drop in general ICT entry-level postings, the report identifies a sharp acceleration in demand for specialised technical skills.

Growth is concentrated in AI and machine learning, data management and analytical reasoning.

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“This is a structural upgrading of roles, as those built on repeatable tasks are being compressed while those combining domain knowledge, analytical reasoning and ability to deploy technology are expanding,” the report read.

Still, the research highlighted a discrepancy between young workers’ enthusiasm for AI and their technical proficiency.

While 78 per cent of entry-level workers use AI for research, 61 per cent for writing and editing, and 50 per cent for basic data analysis, “deep applied fluency lags behind usage”, Accenture said.

Of those surveyed, 81 per cent of entry-level workers reported beginner-level or zero understanding of prompt engineering.

Further, 80 per cent reported a similar lack of understanding regarding AI ethics and governance.

A plan for talent

As for companies themselves, most are “moving on technology, but not yet moving on transformation”, the report read.

Accenture’s research showed that 90 per cent of companies have moved beyond awareness and exploration into implementation of AI.

Half of those surveyed have deployed generative AI in specific business units, and 73 per cent are experimenting with or exploring agentic AI.

“Yet today, only one in three organisations has a talent strategy fully aligned with its AI strategy, and 46 per cent of technology leaders say their company has yet to address redesigning job roles or responsibilities at all,” Accenture said.

Organisations that placed people at the centre of AI transformation in 2025 saw higher revenue growth of 1.8 percentage points and profit growth of 1.4 percentage points compared with their peers, the report noted.

Closing the gap between ambition and actual transformation

The report argues that the gap between national AI ambitions and actual firm-level transformation is urgent.

Employee trust remains a barrier to effective AI adoption.

Only 23 per cent of Singaporean employees trust their employer to act in their best interest when introducing AI, significantly lower than the global average of 83 per cent.

Additionally, 47 per cent of workers identified a lack of leadership support as the single biggest barrier to upskilling.

To close this gap, Accenture outlined three imperatives for Singaporean leadership.

First, CEOs must “make a generational break”. Leaders must treat AI as a fundamental redesign of work itself rather than an incremental technology upgrade. This involves reassembling jobs around human judgment and creative application.

Second, they must view entry-level talent as a growth engine. Instead of hiring fewer junior staff to capture efficiency, leaders should redesign the “first rung” of the career ladder, Accenture said.

This reallocates junior capacity towards higher-order work to build a long-term capability pipeline.

Finally, CEOs should build an organisation that works for AI. Firms must embed transformation capabilities across the enterprise, build AI fluency within daily workflows, and treat trust as a hard operational requirement.

Mark Tham, Singapore country managing director at Accenture, said: “Singapore’s AI future will not be won or lost on algorithms or the latest technology, but on our ability to equip people, redesign work and build trust. Business leaders must elevate their talent strategies to an equal, if not greater, imperative than technology adoption.”

He said Singapore enterprises have largely mastered the tech part, but “the harder question is whether CEOs are willing to own the redesign of work with the same urgency, because that is where the real growth is”.

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