How Much Do You Need to Earn to Be Above Average in Singapore? The 2025 Numbers
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By Spencer Li, CFTe · Last updated: 26 October 2026
To earn more than half of Singapore’s full-time workers, you need more than $5,775 a month. That is the median gross monthly income of full-time employed residents in June 2025, from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), and it includes the employer’s CPF contribution. Before employer CPF, the same median is $5,000. To sit in the top fifth, you need roughly $10,000 a month before employer CPF, which about 19% of full-time workers earned. The “average” you hear quoted is pulled up by a small group of very high earners, so the median is the more honest line to measure yourself against.
Why did the first version of this post get the number wrong?
The first version of this post went up in June 2015, and it was an abridged extract from a Yahoo Finance article. It took Singapore’s GDP, divided it by the number of people in the workforce, and called the answer the average wage.
It is an easy mistake. It also made the number look impressive. The trouble is that GDP measures the value of everything the economy produces, which includes company profits and a lot more than the pay that reaches workers. So dividing GDP by the number of workers gives you output per worker. That is a useful number for economists, and it was never a salary that anyone received.
So for this update I threw out every figure from the old post and went back to MOM’s own survey of what people actually earn, which is published each year in a report called Labour Force in Singapore. The 2025 edition covers June 2025. Every income number below comes from it.
What is the median income in Singapore in 2025?
Here is what MOM reported for full-time employed residents, meaning citizens and permanent residents, as at June 2025.
| Measure | Including employer CPF | Excluding employer CPF |
|---|---|---|
| 20th percentile, the bottom fifth’s ceiling | $3,164 | $2,817 |
| Median, the person in the middle | $5,775 | $5,000 |
Degree holders do better, with a median of $9,038 including employer CPF. Do note what is inside these numbers. MOM counts gross income, which is your pay before the employee’s own CPF and income tax come out. The headline version also adds the employer’s CPF contribution, and it includes one-twelfth of the annual bonus, so a year-end bonus is spread across the months.
So if your gross pay is more than $5,000 a month before any CPF, you already earn more than half of Singapore’s full-time resident workers. A lot of people find that a relief. It sounds low next to the salaries that get shared in group chats, which is a puzzle I come back to below.
The median has also grown. It was $3,949 in 2015 and $5,775 in 2025, which is 46.2% higher in ten years. After inflation, MOM puts the growth at about 2.1% a year, which is steady and quite unglamorous. That is exactly how pay usually grows.
If you would rather spend your energy on a short routine than on comparing payslips, the free 15-minute swing trader checklist is the one I use each day.
How much do you need to earn to be in the top fifth?
In 2015, in the original version of this post, I wrote: “Unless you are drawing a 5-figure salary from your job, it is going to be hard to live comfortably in Singapore without a 2nd source of income.”
So the obvious next step is to count the people who actually draw a five-figure salary. MOM’s table of full-time employed residents by income band, before employer CPF, gives a clear answer for June 2025.
- Under $10,000 a month: 1,695,400 of the 2,100,400 full-time employed residents, or about 80.7%.
- $10,000 a month or more: about 405,000 people, or roughly 19%, which is about 1 in 5.
- $20,000 a month or more: 99,400 people, or about 4.7%, which is roughly 1 in 20.
So the line for the top fifth sits at about $10,000 a month before employer CPF. And the same table for 2015 shows how much that line has moved. Back then, about 201,800 of 1,874,400 full-time employed residents earned $10,000 or more, which is about 10.8%, or 1 in 9.
That share nearly doubled in ten years. Part of that is inflation, because $10,000 in 2025 buys less than it did in 2015, and part of it is real pay growth, which MOM puts at about 2.1% a year at the median. Either way, the five-figure salary that sounded rare in 2015 now belongs to about one full-time worker in five.
The gap between the middle and the top is also why the average misleads. When about 1 in 20 full-time workers are on $20,000 or more a month, those few salaries drag the mean upwards while the person in the middle stays exactly where they are. Picture a kopitiam table of ten friends, and then a CEO sits down. The average income at the table jumps, and nobody else’s payslip has changed at all.
Does your age change the answer?
It does. Quite a lot, in fact, because a fresh graduate comparing their pay with the overall median is comparing themselves with people who have had twenty more years to get promoted.
Here are MOM’s medians for full-time employed residents by age, including employer CPF, as at June 2025.
| Age | Median gross monthly income |
|---|---|
| 25 to 29 | $5,000 |
| 30 to 34 | $6,338 |
| 35 to 39 | $7,253 |
| 40 to 44 | $7,800 |
| 45 to 49 | $7,605 |
| 50 to 54 | $6,825 |
| 55 to 59 | $5,005 |
Pay climbs steeply through your late twenties and thirties, peaks at $7,800 for people aged 40 to 44, and then slides back to about $5,000 by the late fifties, which is roughly where it started at 25. So a 27-year-old on $5,500 including employer CPF is above the median for their age, even though they are below the overall median. If you want to compare yourself with anyone, compare yourself with your own age group.
Why do these numbers feel inflated?
On 26 January 2026, a reader on Reddit’s r/singaporefi asked about the way MOM counts income. Their question was blunt: “Doesn’t these numbers seemed inflated?” Once they added their bonus and their employer’s CPF, their income on paper came out far above the take-home pay that actually reached their bank account, and they wondered whether the yearly growth figures were flattered the same way.
They have a point. Here is the concession, with a date on it. As at June 2025, the headline median of $5,775 includes the employer’s CPF contribution and a twelfth of the annual bonus. Neither lands in your bank account each month. The median before employer CPF was $5,000, and your take-home pay is lower again, because your own CPF contribution comes out before the money reaches you.
So the headline number is accurate for what it measures, which is the total cost of employing someone. It just measures more than your payslip does. If you compare your take-home pay with the headline median, you will always feel behind, and you will be comparing two different things.
The fair comparison is gross pay with gross pay. Take your monthly salary before any CPF is deducted, add a twelfth of your bonus, and put that next to MOM’s $5,000.
Why does everyone else seem to earn more?
In 1954, the psychologist Leon Festinger published a paper called “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes”. One of his ideas was that people want to know how they are doing, and when there is no objective measure to hand, they judge themselves by comparing with other people. Another was that we mostly compare ourselves with people who are similar to us.
That explains a lot about salary envy. Most of us never open MOM’s tables. We look at the colleague who just got promoted, the university friend who joined a bank, and the people in finance forums who happen to post their pay. Those are the people similar enough to compare with, and they are rarely a fair sample of the country. The people most willing to share their salary online are probably the ones with a salary worth sharing.
So the feeling of being behind usually comes from the comparison group, and much less from the actual numbers, which is why two people on the same salary can feel rich and poor at once. The MOM table is the objective measure Festinger said people reach for first, when they have one. Now you have one.
For me, the more useful question is what you do with your income, more than whether it clears a line in a survey. Two people on the same $5,000 can end up in very different places, depending on how much they keep and how they put it to work. I wrote about that in the 10 financial milestones everyone needs to aim for, and about the investing side of early retirement in FIRE in Singapore.
If you want a routine that fits around a full-time job, the free 15-minute swing trader checklist is the one I run each day.
FAQ
What is the median salary in Singapore in 2025?
MOM puts the median gross monthly income of full-time employed residents at $5,775 as at June 2025, including employer CPF contributions. Excluding employer CPF, it is $5,000.
Does the MOM median include CPF?
The headline figure includes the employer’s CPF contribution and one-twelfth of the annual bonus. MOM also publishes a version without employer CPF, which was $5,000 in June 2025. Both are gross figures, before your own CPF and income tax.
How much do you need to earn to be in the top 20% in Singapore?
About $10,000 a month before employer CPF. In June 2025, about 80.7% of full-time employed residents earned less than $10,000, and roughly 19% earned $10,000 or more.
What is the 20th percentile income in Singapore?
MOM puts it at $3,164 a month including employer CPF, or $2,817 excluding it, as at June 2025.
Why is the average salary higher than the median?
Because a small number of very high earners pull the average up, while the median only looks at the person in the middle. About 4.7% of full-time employed residents earned $20,000 or more a month in June 2025, and those salaries lift the mean far more than the median.
How much do degree holders earn in Singapore?
The median for full-time employed degree holders was $9,038 a month including employer CPF in June 2025, against $5,775 for all full-time employed residents.
So where does your own number sit against the median for your age? And does it feel higher or lower than you expected once you compare gross with gross? Let me know in the comments.
If you are curious about the cost side of the same question, I looked at it in the high cost of living in Singapore. And if you want to learn about the markets from the start, you can begin with my free trading guides.
And if you want a daily routine that fits into 15 minutes, grab the free 15-minute swing trader checklist.
About the author. Spencer Li is The 15-Minute Trader and the founder of Synapse Trading. He is a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe) with 15+ years of trading, run from 70+ countries. He holds a B.Acc and B.BM from SMU. Every trade he takes is public, dated, losses left in. He teaches rules-based swing trading in 15 minutes a day, one system for any market.
Education, not financial advice. Synapse Trading is not licensed by MAS to advise on investment products. Trading carries risk of loss, and past performance is not indicative of future results.
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Educational content only, not personalised financial advice. Trading carries risk, including loss of capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Synapse Trading is not licensed or regulated by MAS.
