Netizen says there are more foreigners than locals working at Singapore food court
On Tuesday (11 Aug), a netizen took to Threads saying there are more foreigners than locals working at a food court in Singapore.
They claimed they saw a Burmese worker cooking Chinese cuisine and a Chinese woman cooking Malaysian noodles at the unnamed food court.
“The only authentic one is Malay selling nasi lemak and nasi padang,” they wrote.
They then questioned: “What happened to the local Singapore workers?”
In the comments section, the Original Poster (OP) further stated that the food is no longer authentic because of this.
Commenters say pay is too low for locals
Some echoed the OP’s sentiment, adding that this has led them to stop buying from certain stalls.
Source: Threads
One user also claimed that this isn’t a Singapore-specific issue.
They mentioned that Johor Bahru (JB) supposedly struggles with this as well, adding that there are “no more local cooks” in JB either.
Source: Threads
However, others offered hypotheses as to why there are more foreigners than locals working at food courts.
They said Singaporeans may not want these jobs due to low pay despite long work hours.
Source: Threads
“Everyone wants to eat hawker food but no one wants to be a hawker,” one netizen wrote.
Source: Threads
Long hours and low pay deter Singaporeans from working at hawkers
The discourse around hawker stall employees isn’t particularly novel.
Over the years, Singaporeans have provided their take on why these jobs are now mostly taken by foreign workers.
In a Reddit post in Dec 2025, a Redditor asked how much salary a typical hawker stall worker would make in Singapore.
One user suggested hawker assistants earn a maximum of S$2,200 while cooks earn about S$3,000 at best.
“That’s why the workers are usually foreigners,” they added.
Source: Reddit
Meanwhile, in a Reddit post discussing how the public can help Singapore’s hawker culture survive, one commenter listed some problems about working at hawker stalls.
These include hawker workers often needing to work from 3am to 8pm in a hot and humid environment.
“In the end, earn peanuts compared to all your friends working comfortably in air-con office,” they wrote.
“How many younger gens will try? In the end, all the hawkers are taken over by foreigners cooking instead.”
Source: Reddit
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Featured image adapted from MS News. For illustration purposes only.
