Metroman:
Please stop flattering Singaporeans on not having a sense of entitlement etc.... (I'm a Singaporean myself)
Basically, the government has opened the floodgates for all sorts of low skilled foreigners to take lower skilled jobs in hospitality and retail, the wages for such jobs have been severely depressed over the past decade. Well over half of retail and service type jobs in Singapore are now taken by foreigners like Chinese nationals and Malaysians.
Singaporeans generally have as great a sense of self-entitlement as Australians. Singaporeans won't do work which requires them getting their hands dirty, long hours, working weekends, shifts etc etc etc.
There is even a facebook page called "I am Singaporean and sick of service staff who can only speak Mandarin"
As a result, native born and bred Singaporeans will eventually become like the EMIRATIS in terms of work ethic, except that we have no oil!
The end result is skilled jobs here (graduate jobs and above) generally pay similarly to what you'd get in Australia (esp post tax), and unskilled jobs have salaries that are generally being depressed towards developing country levels, since people from China would gladly work for 12 hours a day for $1200 a month as a check out chick, seeing as in China they'd get the equivalent of $200 a month for the same job.