By Citra Nasruddin, Programme Director for Tech For Good Institute
Southeast Asia (SEA) faces a crossroads. . According to the World Economic Forum, approximately 39% of skills expected of today’s workforce will be disrupted within five years. Since 2016, skills have already shifted by nearly 40%, and experts suggest that advanced AI, particularly Generative AI, could accelerate this shift to nearly 72% by 2030.
This rapid transformation requires a reimagining of workforce policy—one that integrates skills development, worker protections, and wellbeing under a single, unified approach. Whatever form work takes—permanent job, gig, portfolio career, or something in between—it must provide a reasonable living and a pathway to a better future.
Southeast Asia at the Forefront of Digital Transformation
SEA is not a backwater in the digital economy. Over 460 million people in the region are online, and the digital economy is projected to reach over USD 360 billion in gross merchandise value by 2025. From e-commerce to fintech to platform services, the region is rapidly transforming how people buy, sell, and get paid.
Yet this progress is uneven. While broadband is nearly universal in Singapore, less than a third of people in Myanmar and Laos have reliable internet access. This digital divide has created a “two-speed” region: some areas are reaping productivity gains from AI and cloud services, while others risk being left behind.
Skill gaps compound this issue. A 2023 APAC study found that 81% of employers struggle to fill tech-related roles. Many prioritised creativity, innovation, and language skills over coding. These gaps will determine who benefits from digital transformation and who may be left behind.
New Models of Work in the Digital and AI Era
Digital platforms have made it easier for people to piece together income from multiple sources: driving, delivering, freelancing, teaching online, or creating content. AI is also creating new roles—such as prompt engineers and AI trainers—and reshaping existing professions, from doctors using diagnostic tools to journalists employing generative AI.
The Tech For Good Institute (TFGI) gathered these insights from roundtable discussions held since May 2025. One key takeaway: this transformation is not limited to highly skilled workers. The rice farmer can access a smartphone marketplace; the surgeon can leverage AI for diagnostic support. Remote work, digital nomad visas, and the globalisation of knowledge work mean that labor can be produced from anywhere.
This shift is liberating, but it can also be destabilising. The central question for policymakers is how to ensure these new work models lead to decent and secure income at scale.
Country Spotlights: Models and Gaps
Across the region, countries are experimenting with innovative workforce programs—but scale and inclusivity vary.
Across Southeast Asia, countries are experimenting with innovative workforce programs, offering lessons in both opportunity and limitation. Singapore’s SkillsFuture illustrates what an agile national approach can achieve. Its modular courses, strong employer partnerships, and widespread uptake—260,000 Singaporeans utilised SkillsFuture credits in 2023 alone—demonstrate the potential of structured lifelong learning. Yet even this advanced system faces pressure to evolve, as AI increasingly demands personalised, adaptive learning experiences over standardised group classes.
Indonesia’s Kartu Prakerja offers insight into scaling training programs in a vast, diverse workforce. Since 2020, it has provided online training to nearly 19 million participants. The program’s success shows that digital access can drive skills development at scale, but reaching informal workers and micro-enterprises outside major urban centers remains a challenge.
Vietnam highlights the potential of public-private partnerships to strengthen the ICT pipeline and digital capabilities. Policies such as the 2025 Decree 180, which enables collaborations for digital transformation and training, demonstrate how governments can incentivise private investment in workforce development. At the same time, the predominance of small and medium-sized enterprises means that access to resources for upskilling remains uneven, underscoring the need for inclusive strategies.
These examples are not about ranking countries; they illustrate different pathways to equipping workforces for the digital and AI era. Singapore demonstrates agility and uptake, Indonesia showcases scale and reach, and Vietnam highlights the importance of partnerships. Together, they reveal a common lesson: purposeful, adaptable workforce policy must account for local contexts while aiming for inclusivity, ensuring that digital transformation benefits all segments of the workforce.
Policy Direction: From Skills to Systems
To successfully navigate workforce transformation in Southeast Asia, policy must connect three critical elements: future-ready skills, inclusive protections, and partnerships that deliver at scale.
Lifelong learning must become a tangible reality rather than a slogan. This requires prioritising transferable skills such as creativity, communication, critical thinking, and digital literacy. Training cycles should be shortened, and content designed to be modular, enabling workers to prepare for new roles in months rather than years. Adaptive platforms can help those already in the workforce transition into in-demand careers and jobs, ensuring continuous skill development keeps pace with technological change.
Equally important are human-centered protections. Governments need to harmonise professional recognition across borders where applicable, clarify tax rules for platform income, and extend social protections to non-traditional workers. At the same time, policies must support mental wellbeing, predictable staffing, and the right to disconnect, while remaining culturally relevant and flexible enough to avoid stifling innovation. Protections should empower workers rather than act as blunt instruments that slow progress.
No government can achieve these goals alone. Public-private partnerships can bridge gaps by connecting tech companies, local firms, and educators to build accessible learning ecosystems for small and medium-sized enterprises and informal workers. Open labor-market data is critical: without timely, granular insights, policy will lag behind the pace of change, leaving learners and businesses at a disadvantage. ASEAN can play a valuable role by encouraging common standards for skills taxonomies and piloting mechanisms for well-governed cross-border data exchange.
Laws and regulations must also adapt to emerging work models. Policymakers should account for platform-based work, algorithmic decision processes, and data privacy, while recognising the reality of informal employment. Pragmatic, transitional models are necessary, but they must also reflect the lived experience of millions who rely on flexible income sources. Workforce policy should not simply react to change—it must anticipate and shape it.
Conclusion
The stakes for Southeast Asia are high. With one of the youngest workforces in the world, the region holds a demographic dividend that could fuel decades of growth—if talent is nurtured and opportunity is accessible. Ignoring these shifts, however, risks leaving millions underemployed and widening inequality across the region.
AI and digital platforms will inevitably reshape the economy. What is less certain is whether this transformation will create broad-based opportunity or deepen precarity. The choices governments, businesses, and communities make today will determine who benefits—and who is left behind.
If workforce policy is treated as an afterthought, Southeast Asia risks falling behind. But if transformation is approached strategically—embedding lifelong learning, designing flexible protections, and building trust through data-driven policy—the region can not only adapt to AI but also lead globally in fostering equitable, human-centered work. Southeast Asia has the chance to shape a future where technology empowers all, not just a few.
