Salary.sg – Your Salary in Singapore

When did your annual pay go above $100,000 for the first time?

Based on Iras Annual Report 2009/10, there were exactly 216,358 resident taxpayers in Singapore earning more than $100,000 in 2008.

This is about 21% of all resident taxpayers.

Are you one of them?

When did you first achieve a 6-figure income?

Our very popular income comparison calculator has been updated with the latest data from Ministry of Manpower’s Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2010 (released in 2011).

This simple tool lets you compare your gross monthly income against other Singapore residents in your age group and gender group. You may also compare with all age groups and/or both gender groups.

As defined in the MOM report, gross monthly income includes “wages or salaries, allowances, overtime, commission, tips and bonuses” and also the employee’s CPF contribution (but not employer’s).

Without further ado, simply divide your total gross annual income (including bonus) by 12 and enter the result below to start comparing:

Compare your percentile ranking with the 2010 version of this tool. If your income remained the same, you would most likely be worse off, because everyone else’s income has generally gone up:

“The median monthly income from work of residents in full-time employment rose by 4.2% over the year to $2,710 in 2010, faster than the marginal growth of 0.5% in 2009.  Even after adjusting for the higher inflation in 2010, the median income rose by 1.3%, recovering from a slight dip of 0.1% in 2009.” (Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2010)

Reference: Statistical Table 41, Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2010, Ministry of Manpower (link).

When Straits Times reported on the research by DTZ, it said:

“FOREIGN home buyers snapped up 16 per cent of all private homes sold in the first quarter – the highest quarterly percentage since data became available in 1995.”

We all are familiar by now that when the government and the media use the term “foreigners”, they mean “foreigners who aren’t PRs”. See our previous post on the difference between “locals” and “citizens“.

If you read the actual DTZ report, which analysed the transactions of private homes in Q1 2011, you will see this:

“Although Singaporeans continued to make up the majority of purchasers, their share decreased to 67% in the quarter from 70% in Q4 2010. This is the lowest proportion recorded since Q4 2007 when Singaporeans made up 66% of all purchasers”

This implies 33% of buyers of private homes are PRs and foreigners. One-third.

There’s also a curious footnote on page 5 of the DTZ report:

“Unless specifically stated, the term ‘foreigner’ mentioned throughout the report does not include Singapore Permanent Residents (SPR).”

PRs are such a special group in Singapore.

Ok, so much for private property. In the meantime, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan has blogged about the buyer profile of HDB resale flats. He revealed that 20% of resale flat buyers are PRs. One-fifth.

So, non-citizens form one-third of private home buyers and one-fifth of resale flat buyers.

One-third and one-fifth.

When our population hits 6.5 million as proposed by former MND minister Mah Bow Tan, will the respective ratios become one-half and one-quarter?

[Update 5 Jan 2012: See our latest post Pay Cut for Prime Minister and Ministers, But Note the Make-Up Pay.] PM Lee has just appointed a committee chaired by Gerard Ee to review ministerial salaries. As pointed out in today’s Straits Times (printed edition), the government “does not disclose how much each minister is paid”, but [...]

115,900 jobs were created last year, but it’s not clear how many of these jobs were taken up by citizens. As I mentioned previously, it is baffling when we see the term “locals” whenever job and salary statistics are released by the government. Let me clear the air again: The term “locals” refer to BOTH [...]

Among the Class of 2010 from NUS, SMU and NTU, graduates from the NUS Law Faculty got the highest starting pay. This is according to the 2010 Graduate Employment Survey results. Featuring for the first time in the Salary.sg ranking tables, the 2010 batch of lawyers from NUS received an average starting salary of $4,770. [...]

The President of Singapore will get a salary of $4,267,500. This is an increase of 26.4% from the previous pay of $3,376,800. See news report. I believe this is the first government appointment / job that pays a salary of more than $4 million. The Prime Minister makes $3m while ministers make close to $2m. [...]

Senior civil servants will get 8 months of GDP Bonus this year. This was announced in Parliament yesterday by DPM Teo Chee Hean. Annual salaries of senior officers in government are “automatically linked” to GDP growth. When GDP growth is 2% or below, the bonus will be zero. As such, these senior civil servants did [...]

Household incomes have risen across the board, recovering from the dips seen last year. This is according to the latest Household Income & Expenditure data released by the Singapore Department of Statistics. Households in the highest decile – the 91st to 100th percentiles – earn an average of $23,684 per month. To compare your household [...]

According to the just released Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2010, 32.2% of degree holders in the resident labour force are graduates in Business and Administration. This is up from 31.9% last year. In contrast, the other common fields of study all saw a decrease – Engineering Sciences from 23.9% last year down to 23.2% [...]