#Singapore #INSEAD #Global Talent Competitiveness Index

Singapore's Rise to the Top in Talent Competitiveness

In a significant development for the global labor market, Singapore has overtaken Switzerland to claim the top position in the 2025 Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI). This remarkable achievement highlights Singapore's capability to cultivate a workforce that is adaptable, digitally proficient, and ready for innovation in the age of artificial intelligence. The annual GTCI report, produced by INSEAD since 2013, serves as a critical benchmark for evaluating labor market policies, workforce organization, and talent flow.

This year marks the first time Singapore has secured the top rank in GTCI, showcasing its strategic focus on educational evolution and workforce adaptability. The GTCI 2025 report, themed "Resilience in the Age of Disruptions," analyzes how nations and economies develop talent systems capable of weathering emerging challenges. 135 economies are included in the ranking, which relies on 77 indicators, assessing soft skills, talent concentration in artificial intelligence, and several other dimensions such as Enable, Attract, Grow, Retain, Vocational and Technical Skills, and Generalist Adaptive Skills.

Felipe Monteiro, a director at GTCI and professor at INSEAD, emphasized the importance of transforming adversities into catalysts for innovation and renewed purpose. According to Monteiro, resilience is about moving forward post-crisis, rather than merely returning to previous conditions. Lily Fang, Dean of Research and Innovation at INSEAD, added that the report should be viewed as more than just a competition between countries; it gives leaders vital benchmarks for integrating powerful technologies like AI into humanity's quest for progress.

With this GTCI ranking comes a new collaboration between INSEAD and the Portulans Institute, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit research organization. Rafael Escalona Reynoso, Director General of Portulans Institute, noted that the partnership deepens the understanding of GTCI in a time marked by rapid technological advancements, geopolitical uncertainty, and significant social changes, making reliable talent indicators more important than ever.

Singapore's Strengths in the GTCI

The report identifies Singapore's continuous evolution in its education system and its forward-thinking approach to cultivating a flexible, innovative workforce as key to its success. The city-state ranked first in the category of General Adaptive Skills, which encompasses soft skills, digital competencies, and a mindset geared towards innovation. Additionally, Singapore's ability to retain talent has also improved, climbing seven spots to rank 31st in this category.

According to Paul Evans, Emeritus Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, economies that nurture flexible, multifunctional teams adept in AI are generally better at converting disruptions into opportunities and maintaining long-term competitiveness. The 2025 GTCI results emphasize that talent competitiveness does not solely depend on income levels, but also on the strategic orientation of policies, quality of institutions, and effective mobilization of human capital resources.

GTCI 2025 Top 20 Countries

1. Singapore
2. Switzerland
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Sweden
6. Netherlands
7. Norway
8. Luxembourg
9. United States
10. Australia
11. Ireland
12. United Kingdom
13. Iceland
14. Canada
15. Belgium
16. Austria
17. Germany
18. New Zealand
19. France
20. Czechia

Responding to Challenges with Fewer Resources

The GTCI 2025 report, audited by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, presents a crucial message: the ability to convert investments into tangible outcomes will distinguish economies in the race for talent. Israel, along with Singapore and South Korea, has demonstrated remarkable success in achieving high talent performance with fewer resources. This trend extends to several low-to-middle-income countries such as Tajikistan, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, with even low-income countries like Rwanda showcasing a solid foundation for talent development.

Evans highlights that economies synthesizing education, labor markets, and innovation domains towards adaptive talent development can achieve high performance, even amidst moderate income levels.

Regional Insights

The regional breakdown reveals few surprises, with Europe dominating the rankings, holding 18 of the top 25 positions, including key economies like Germany (17th), France (19th), and the United Kingdom (12th). In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia (10th) and New Zealand (18th) have outperformed Singapore regarding talent retention but fall short in General Adaptive Skills. Meanwhile, China's drop from 40th to 53rd reflects less favorable business and labor market conditions, partially attributed to insufficient data.

North America exhibits strong talent development potential across various sectors, as evidenced by the high rankings of the USA (9th) and Canada (14th), even with the USA experiencing a decline from its 2023 performance.

In North Africa and the Middle East, Israel (23rd) leads, while the United Arab Emirates (25th) tops the region in attracting talent and skills development, albeit lagging in high-level competencies. Chile (39th) leads Latin America and the Caribbean, followed closely by Uruguay (42nd) and Costa Rica (44th), although neither of the two largest economies, Brazil nor Mexico, made it to the top 50.

Looking toward the future, Escalona Reynoso stresses that adaptive capabilities—the ability to collaborate, engage in interdisciplinary thinking, innovate under pressure, and navigate rapidly changing technology-driven environments—are defining factors for national competitiveness. The GTCI has captured this reality more clearly than ever.

For more information and media resources regarding GTCI 2025, further details are available online. Following #GTCI2025 for updates.