I knew a few people who were permanent residents in Singapore for work, and they were not "labor". In fact, I think the population drop would be almost all in the high-skilled professional worker cohort. These are exactly the people you need to achieve those lofty goals.
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.
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.
