Our staff, interns and volunteers who helped with the survey
On average, the Tamil migrant worker first came to Singapore 13 years ago, and on average he is now 38 years old. So, the typical worker has spent about one third of his life in Singapore. These findings from our recent survey of 391 Tamil-speaking Indian workers challenge the stereotype of a very transient foreign workforce comprised of fit young men.
Despite such a longish career in Singapore, we also found that on average, the worker stays on any one job for about four-and-a-half years.
This is in the same ballpark as reported in two previous studies that TWC2 did: this one from 2021 and this one from 2023 which found an average of 4.2 and 5.28 years respectively.
The latest survey was conducted on Deepavali, 20 October 2025. Another charity, Krsna’s Free Meals, organised an event and invited us to participate, and we found it to be a great opportunity to conduct a poll. Since Deepavali is a Hindu festival and Krsna would be offering South Indian food, we expected migrant workers from Tamil Nadu to form the vast majority of the event’s attendees. To keep the sampling clean, we restricted the survey to Tamil-speaking Work Permit and S-Pass holders from India.
Our staff and volunteers sacrificed their public holiday to carry it out, and under the hot sun too. We were also enthusiastically assisted by TWC2’s Tamil ambassadors, migrant workers themselves, who also sacrificed their public holiday, but whose ability to speak Tamil was invaluable and made the survey a resounding success.
Interviews were conducted face-to-face by our volunteers and ambassadors, with the latter playing a critical role in establishing rapport, cultivating cooperation and translating the questions and answers. Since the conversations were largely in Tamil, this would have minimised any risk of misunderstood questions or answers.
Among the highlights from our interactions with survey participants, we found one man who first came in 1990. “That’s before I was born!” remarked a staff member supervising the survey. It turns out that the worker was not that unusual. About eight percent of our respondents first came to Singapore in the 1990s.
Findings such as these give much food for thought. When migrant workers stay as long as they do in Singapore, how do we invest in skills? This is necessary both to benefit Singapore as well as to ensure a rewarding career for them.
Another question that comes to mind is this: What does the relatively high average age of 38 years imply? Is it getting harder to find migrant workers from Tamil Nadu? If so, what will that mean for our continuing need for low-wage labour?
The full report (PDF, 17 pages) can be downloaded by clicking the icon at right.