[quacked]

The article says "The total population, which includes foreigners who live, work and study in Singapore but are not permanent residents, dropped by 4.1% to 5.45 million people. hat was largely as a result of a 10.7% decrease in its non-resident population."

There are certainly many high-skilled professional workers in that cohort, including the few Singapore residents I know who left, but it's certainly not all.

[refurb]

Foreign workers dropped by 147,000 and if you dig into that number, a decent amount were Employment Pass workers which are generally "highly skilled". The other tend to be more lower skilled/manual labor jobs.