Job Security for Expats

When Your Job Is More Than a Job: The Mental Health Toll of Job Insecurity for Expats in Singapore

Right now, like so many people in Singapore, we're sitting with a particular kind of uncertainty. Not just "will I lose my job?" fear — but something deeper, more layered, and harder to name.

I've been holding this quietly for a while. But as a therapist, I know that the things we hold quietly are often the things most worth saying out loud. So here it is

It's Not Just a Job. It's Your Whole Life Here.

For most people, losing a job is painful. For expats in Singapore, it can feel existential.

When your Employment Pass is tied to your employment, job loss doesn't just threaten your income — it triggers an immediate legal clock. Under Singapore's Ministry of Manpower guidelines, an Employment Pass must be cancelled within one week of an employee's last working day. Once cancelled, the former pass holder is issued a Short-Term Visit Pass valid for just 30 days. Thirty days to find a new job, secure a new pass, or begin the process of dismantling a life you've spent years building.

And it doesn't stop there. When an EP is cancelled, all related Dependent's Passes and Long-Term Visit Passes for family members are cancelled too. Which means a spouse's right to work, children's school enrolment, the family home — all of it becomes uncertain at once.

This is the reality that sits beneath the surface for so many expat families in Singapore right now. And it's a reality that most mainstream conversations about job loss simply don't account for.

The Particular Grief of Expat Job Insecurity

There is a growing body of research on what psychologists call job loss-related complicated grief — the distinct emotional experience of losing not just employment, but the identity, structure, and sense of self that work provides. Research published in Frontiers in Psychiatry found a significant relationship between job loss and identity disruption, noting that symptoms of complicated grief, depression, and anxiety following involuntary job loss are all distinguishable — and real — psychological experiences. But for expats, this grief has additional layers.

When you move to a new country for work, your job doesn't just fund your life — it is the framework of your life. It brought you here. It gave you your community, your routine, your sense of purpose in a new place. For many expats, especially those who have left careers, families, and familiar cultures behind, the job becomes deeply intertwined with identity in a way that is unique to the expatriate experience.

Research on the psychological distress of job loss consistently identifies several core themes: loss of self-esteem, shame, loss of status, a disrupted sense of control, and financial strain. For expats, all of these are compounded by the added layer of potential displacement — the possibility of having to leave not just a job, but a home, a school, a community, a version of yourself you've worked hard to build.

This is not catastrophising. This is a very specific, very valid kind of loss.

Anticipatory Grief: The Anxiety of Waiting

Perhaps what is most difficult about the current moment — with layoffs rippling through tech, finance, and other industries — is that many people are suffering before anything has actually happened.

This has a name: anticipatory grief. It is the emotional weight of dreading a loss that hasn't yet occurred, and it can be just as exhausting as the loss itself.

If you find yourself lying awake at 2am running through scenarios. If you're compulsively checking LinkedIn, industry news, internal Slack channels for any signal of what's coming. If there's a low hum of dread you can't quite shake, even on good days — this is your nervous system responding to genuine uncertainty. It is not weakness. It is not overreacting. It is a completely understandable human response to a situation with real, high stakes.

Research into job loss and psychological distress has shown that even the anticipation of job insecurity is associated with increased symptoms of anxiety and depression — and that this effect holds regardless of education level or professional status. Losing a job, or fearing you might, does not discriminate.

The Identity Question Nobody Talks About

Beneath the practical fears — the visa, the home, the school — there is often a quieter, more painful question:

Who am I here, if not this?

For many expats, especially those who have built their identity around professional achievement, this question can surface with startling force when employment feels uncertain. Work, in the context of expat life, often carries more psychological weight than it might in a person's home country. It is the reason you are here. It is how you justify the sacrifices made — leaving family, familiar ground, a sense of belonging — to build something new.

When that something new feels precarious, it doesn't just raise practical questions. It raises existential ones. About belonging. About whether this life was ever really yours to keep. About what home means, and where it actually is.

These are not small questions. They deserve real space — not just practical problem-solving.

What Helps (And What Doesn't)

I want to be honest here: there is no quick fix for the kind of uncertainty so many families are navigating right now. But there are things that genuinely help.

Name what you're feeling. Anticipatory grief is real grief. Anxiety about your visa is real anxiety. Naming these experiences — to yourself, or to someone you trust — reduces their power. Research consistently shows that putting feelings into words helps regulate the nervous system and restore a sense of agency.

Separate the layers. Job loss anxiety for expats contains multiple distinct fears: practical (the visa, the finances, the logistics), relational (the community, the children), and existential (identity, belonging, purpose). Try not to let them collapse into one overwhelming mass. Each layer deserves separate attention.

Limit the spiral. Information has a point of diminishing return. Set a boundary on how much time you spend reading layoff news or refreshing for updates. Staying informed is useful. Constant monitoring is a way of trying to control what cannot be controlled — and it exhausts the nervous system.

Stay in your body. Anticipatory anxiety lives in the future. Grounding techniques — movement, breathwork, the 5-4-3-2-1 sensory exercise — bring you back to the present moment, where you are actually okay, right now.

Don't carry it alone. This is perhaps the most important thing. The expat experience can already be isolating. Job insecurity compounds that isolation — people often feel ashamed, or reluctant to worry those they love. But connection is one of the strongest buffers against psychological distress. Reach out to people who can hold space for what you're going through. And if you need professional support, please don't wait until you're in crisis to seek it.

A Note From Me

I'm writing this not just as a therapist, but as someone living inside this moment alongside many of you. The uncertainty is real. The fear makes complete sense. The grief of potentially losing a life you've worked incredibly hard to build — even before anything has happened — is valid and it deserves to be acknowledged.

If you're sitting with any of this right now and would like somewhere to put it, my door is open. Whether you're navigating job insecurity, the fear of displacement, or the quieter identity questions that come with expat life - this is exactly the kind of work I do, and the kind of space I try to hold.

You don't have to keep carrying this quietly.

References

• Van Eersel, J.H.W., Taris, T.W., & Boelen, P.A. (2022). Job loss-related complicated grief symptoms: A cognitive-behavioral framework. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.933995

• Jahoda, M. (1981). Work, employment, and unemployment: Values, theories, and approaches in social research. American Psychologist, 36(2), 184–191.

• McKee-Ryan, F., Song, Z., Wanberg, C.R., & Kinicki, A.J. (2005). Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: A meta-analytic study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(1), 53–76.

• Ministry of Manpower, Singapore. Employment Pass cancellation guidelines. https://www.mom.gov.sg

• Expat Living Singapore. (2021). Losing your job in Singapore. https://expatliving.sg/losing-your-job-in-singapore/

• Blasco-Belled, A. et al. (2023). Job loss and psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic: A national prospective cohort study. BMC Public Health.