[Excerpt] Singapore’s extraordinary record of growth between 1960 and 2000 resulted in enormous benefits to workers in all sectors. A poor country with a largely unskilled workforce in the 1950s, real per capita income in Singapore rose 9.8 times between 1960 and 1999,2 and, by 2001, Singapore’s gross national income per capita (GNI) of US$21,500 – was slightly less than that of Canada. Singapore’s workers rarely felt the bite of unemployment, which for most of the 1980s and 1990s remained well under four percent, and enjoyed a broad range of social benefits. Today, workers are able to purchase housing at a low cost, medical benefits are widely available, and social insurance programs include worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance, and retirement benefits.