Number and Profile of People Working in Singapore Media Industry

Ms Janice Koh asked the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (a) what is the current number of people working in the media industry in Singapore; (b) what percentage of these are from the film, television and broadcast sector; and (c) within the film, television and broadcast sector, how many are fully employed and how many are freelancers.

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Assoc Prof Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: The latest available statistics indicate that the employment in the media industry stood at around 68,300 in 2010 7 . The media industry, as defined by the Singapore Standard Industrial Classification (SSIC) codes, includes the film and video, broadcasting, publishing, printing, music, online media, and games and software sub-sectors.

Six percent of the people in the media sector were attributed to the film and video subsector. Another 7% were attributed to the broadcasting subsector. Both the film and video, and broadcasting subsectors employed over 4,000 workers each 8 .

While there are no official statistics on freelancers and their participation in specific media subsectors, previous surveys have estimated the number of freelancers in the whole media sector to be about 29,000 9 . Based on information from the industry, freelancers do switch from work-for-hire vendors to full-time employees of the production companies. Hence, the number of freelancers varies according to projects. The freelancers are mainly employed by the industry for creation and production activities.

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Note(s) to Question No(s) 11:

7 Source: DOS and EDB.

8 Source: DOS.

9 This figure is not included in the employment figure of 68,300 for media sector.