Young Singaporeans becoming private hire drivers is a topic of discussion lately.

The issue at hand?

Seemingly well-educated youths in their 20s and 30s are opting to do a job equivalent to running errands that does not appear to require skills or even related to what was studied in school, and with dim prospects of career advancement in the corporate world in the future.

This was what CNA reported recently, quoting Walter Theseira, a transport economist at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS).

Young drivers galore

The numbers are pretty stark: There are some 41,000 Private Hire Car Driver’s Vocational Licence (PDVL) holders in Singapore, of which 44.4 percent are aged between 20 and 39 years.

Theseira said: “The jobs offer no career path and do not provide workers with significant marketable skills. This means that workers in such jobs will inevitably end up disadvantaged compared to their peers who are able to stay in jobs that offer a career path and the opportunity to build marketable skills.”

He also added: “Thus, if workers are attracted to private hire driving and other 'gig' economy jobs and spend too long in them early on, their lifetime wages and career opportunities could be harmed significantly.”

One key reason could also be because a private hire driver job has been marketed as way cooler than taxi-driving.

But there is probably more.

Drivers get paid relatively well

From the economist's point of view, the issues are seen from a macro lens: They are about why Singapore's economy cannot absorb such drivers into other vocational roles that would make the country more robust and why wages can be more attractive in a driver's vocation.

However, it should be noted that the economist's concerns are fairly far removed from what real people actually do when push comes to shove.

The examples of young private hire drivers cited by CNA are just a snapshot of what is going on.

One is a 24-year-old part-time student -- who at this tender age is in effect owning a car -- and another is a 39-year-old who has been retrenched and sick of the corporate rat race.

Both can expect to earn between S$3,000 and S$5,000 a month as drivers -- after paying for everything associated with using the car.

Therefore, the plus point: This salary figure is in fact much higher than a lot of other vocations in Singapore today.

What real people do

A Medium article by Anna Molly, a mother in Singapore, gives a more intimate account.

Written from her first-person perspective and as a tribute to her partner, the answer as to why her husband chose to become a private hire driver husband is practical: It pays the bills and it is exactly what her family with two young children needs right now.

There are no highfalutin explanations.

The family needs the money, the job pays well, it solves the transport problems, and at the end of the day, it works out for now as both husband and wife are pulling their own weight in the relationship.

Most importantly, there is no resentment.

This, in itself, is probably worth $100,000 a year in economic value for anyone who has been through strenuous relationships.

The economy and the attendant macroeconomics that economists wax analytical about all the time can then go sort itself out.

Because here is what the wife wrote, in her own words:

Back in 2015, my Husband first drove for Uber when the ride-hailing transport service launched nationwide in Singapore.

At that point of time, it was the most calculated option as we just had our first child, and staying on our own meant that we had to commute every morning from our home in Punggol to my parents’ in Woodlands to drop our baby off, before heading to work in the city.

The journey to and fro took us more than two hours each day.

Feeling like he was in a dead-end job at a company where he was underpaid and underappreciated, my Husband took a leap of faith and resigned from his desk job so that he could earn more and have more flexibility in his schedule to look after our baby.

With Uber and Grab, it was possible. He was just 30 years old then.

After becoming a PHVD, he was able to send our two daughters every morning to my parents’ place before turning on his driver app, up until they each turned 18 months. That ‘gig’ took 3 years of his life and he hasn’t looked back since.

Counter arguments

To an economist or any calculative person, a car is just a cost and a possession that devalues over time.

It adds to traffic jams. It adds to pollution.

But to real people, a car is used to meet needs and wants that serves both practical and visceral purposes that cannot be quantified.

There is no invariant number.

It is almost the same thing as economists declaring that earning $72,000 a year would make people happy enough.

But the fact is that there are many white-collared workers, economists included, earning more than that and are still unhappy, but they cannot explain why.

Top photo via Unsplash

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