C.3Singapore's Worker Blocs at a Glance

Hawkers are a small group – about 6,900 cooked-food stalls in public centres (our estimate) among 2.38 million employed residents – and the only one that pairs high business risk with the lowest statutory protection.

FIG. C.1 · Placement by zone from the classification test (C.2) and protection matrix (C.4). The arrow shows platform workers' CPF rising to employee-level rates by 2029, for those born in 1995 or later and older workers who opt in.

Platform workers moved up in 2025: all of them gained injury cover, and the younger ones, with the older ones who opt in, reach employee-level CPF rates by 2029. About 26,500 of the older workers, 27%, had opted in by September 2025. Hawkers share the bottom-right with sole proprietors – but unlike them, own nothing they can sell.

C.3 Singapore's Worker Blocs at a Glance: table 1
Bloc	Size	Source
Employed residents	2,376,400 (June 2025)	MOM Labour Force 2025
Self-employed	About 280,000 · 11.8% of employed residents (2025; our arithmetic)	MOM Labour Force 2025
Primary own-account workers	179,200 (2025)	MOM Labour Force 2025
Platform workers receiving CPF	About 90,000 a month (2025), most of them MediSave-only; about 26,500 older workers had opted in to the operator's share (Sept 2025)	MOM, written replies, Jan and Aug 2026
Hawker and stall-holder own-account workers (people, not stalls; markets included)	11,400 in 2016 (Tripartite Workgroup, Annex B); 11,700 in 2017, more than half aged 50 or over	MOM, Own Account Workers 2017
Cooked-food hawker stalls	About 6,900 in public centres (2026; our estimate); one hawker may hold two	Our estimate (Follow the Plate, D.3), as The Straits Times reported (29 Jul 2026); MSE spoke of about 7,000 (Nov 2024); NEA gives about 15,000 stalls, cooked food and market together