A quoted monthly salary is only part of what hiring someone in Singapore actually costs. At a S$6,000/month base salary, an Employment Pass hire costs the employer about 0.2% on top (just SDL), while a Citizen/PR at the same salary costs roughly 17.2% on top once CPF employer contributions are added. Select a pass type below to see the exact load for your hire.
CPF employer (≤55)
17%
Citizen/PR only
SDL
0.25%
every employee, any pass
S Pass levy
S$650/mo
flat, since Sep 2025
EP levy
S$0
no CPF, no FWL
True annual cost to hire
$96,135
Load on top of salary
+0.1%
Annual base salary
12 × monthly base
$96,000
CPF employer contribution
0% (CPF applies only to Citizens/PRs)
$0
Skills Development Levy (SDL)
0.25% of monthly wages, S$2-S$11.25/mo cap, applies to every employee
$135
Foreign Worker Levy (FWL)
0% (FWL applies only to S Pass and Work Permit holders)
$0
Three separate cost lines sit on top of a quoted salary in Singapore, and which ones apply depends entirely on the worker's pass type. Skills Development Levy is the one universal cost: a small, capped charge that applies to every employee regardless of pass type, funding workforce training via SkillsFuture Singapore. It's the only line an Employment Pass hire ever sees.
CPF employer contributions and the Foreign Worker Levy are where the real cost gap opens up. CPF is citizen/PR-only, 17% of Ordinary Wages up to the S$8,000 monthly ceiling for a worker aged 55 or below, and it never touches an Employment Pass, S Pass, or Work Permit hire. FWL runs the other way: it only applies to S Pass and Work Permit holders, a flat S$650/month for an S Pass since the September 2025 harmonisation, with Work Permit rates varying by sector and skill tier.
Put together, an Employment Pass hire is consistently the cheapest pass type to employ on a pure payroll-cost basis, since it avoids both CPF and FWL entirely. That doesn't make it the right hiring choice on its own, headcount quotas and local-hiring policy considerations matter too, but the payroll-cost gap between pass types is real and worth building into any Singapore hiring budget.
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It depends heavily on pass type. For a Citizen/PR, add roughly 17% employer CPF plus a small Skills Development Levy (SDL) charge, typically a 17-18% load. For an Employment Pass holder, there's no CPF or Foreign Worker Levy at all, just SDL, the smallest load of any pass type. For S Pass and Work Permit holders, add the Foreign Worker Levy (FWL) on top of SDL, no CPF applies to either.
17% of Ordinary Wages, up to the $8,000/month OW ceiling, for Citizens/PRs aged 55 and below (2026 rates). The rate steps down to 16% for ages above 55 to 60 and 12.5% for ages above 60 to 65, following the CPF Board's senior-worker rate step-up effective 1 January 2026. CPF employer contributions apply only to Citizens and PRs, never to Employment Pass, S Pass, or Work Permit holders.
SDL is a mandatory levy paid to the CPF Board (via SkillsFuture Singapore) that funds workforce training. It applies to every employee, local or foreign, any pass type, unlike CPF or the Foreign Worker Levy which are pass-type dependent. The rate is 0.25% of monthly wages, floored at $2/month for wages under $800, and capped at $11.25/month for wages at or above $4,500.
FWL is a monthly levy the employer pays MOM for each S Pass or Work Permit holder employed, used to regulate reliance on foreign labour. It does not apply to Employment Pass holders or Citizens/PRs. The S Pass levy is a harmonised flat rate of $650/month across all sectors and tiers (since 1 September 2025). Work Permit levy rates vary considerably by sector and skill tier, roughly $200-$900/month, so this calculator shows two representative tiers; confirm the exact rate for your sector on MOM's levy calculator.
Because an EP holder attracts zero CPF employer contribution and zero Foreign Worker Levy, only the small SDL charge. A Citizen/PR at the same salary costs the employer an additional ~17% in CPF. This is a real, if often overlooked, cost difference employers weigh alongside headcount-quota and local-hiring policy considerations, not purely a payroll-cost decision.
No, they're unrelated. S Pass and Work Permit holders never attract employer or employee CPF (the citizen/PR-only rule), and separately, their employer pays FWL to MOM. FWL is a workforce-policy levy, not a retirement-savings contribution, so unlike CPF it never benefits the employee directly.
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