MOM prorated leave is the rule that decides how many paid annual leave days you have earned when you have not yet clocked a full year with an employer. The Ministry of Manpower sets one formula for it: completed months of service divided by 12, multiplied by your full-year entitlement, then rounded. If you join in March, resign in September, or take long no-pay leave, this sum is what stands between you and being short-changed on your final payslip. It only applies once you pass three months of continuous service, and the days you do not use can be paid out as cash when you leave. This guide walks the exact MOM formula, the 7-to-14-day entitlement ladder, the rounding rule everyone gets wrong, and how to convert leftover days into salary-in-lieu so nothing on your last day goes uncounted.
Proration means scaling your annual leave to the slice of the year you actually worked. Singapore's Employment Act gives a full-year worker a fixed number of paid leave days, but almost nobody starts on 1 January and leaves on 31 December. So MOM prorates: it counts your completed months and gives you that fraction of the full entitlement.
Two situations trigger it. The first is your incomplete first year, when you have worked between three and twelve months. The second is a part-year in any later year, usually because you resign or join partway through the company's leave cycle. In both cases MOM uses the same arithmetic, so once you can do the sum once you can do it for any job.
One thing to fix early: this is statutory paid annual leave, not compassionate leave or marriage leave, which sit outside the Employment Act and depend on your contract. Annual leave is a legal floor your employer cannot drop below.
You qualify for paid annual leave if you are covered by the Employment Act and have completed at least three months of continuous service with the same employer. The Act covers most local and foreign employees on a contract of service, including those in management and executive roles, with seafarers, domestic workers, and statutory board or government staff sitting under separate rules.
Three months of continuous service is the gate. Clear it and you start earning leave from your first day of work, not from month four. The proration formula then reaches back to count every completed month from your start date. Pass the gate and the days are yours to use, encash, or carry over depending on your contract.
Before you can prorate anything you need your full-year number, because proration scales that figure down. The Employment Act sets a statutory minimum that climbs by one day for each year of service, starting at seven days in your first year and capping at fourteen days from your eighth year onward. Many employers offer more than the legal floor; if yours does, prorate the higher contractual figure, not the statutory one.
Note the live policy backdrop. MOM has signalled a review of the Employment Act, and a recommendation to raise the statutory annual leave floor is expected in the second half of 2026. Until any change is gazetted, the table below remains the law as of June 2026, so use it and check your HR portal for anything more generous.
| Year of service | Minimum paid annual leave |
|---|---|
| 1st year | 7 days |
| 2nd year | 8 days |
| 3rd year | 9 days |
| 4th year | 10 days |
| 5th year | 11 days |
| 6th year | 12 days |
| 7th year | 13 days |
| 8th year and beyond | 14 days |
Here is the official sum, word for word from MOM: completed months of service divided by 12 months, multiplied by your number of days of annual leave entitlement. An incomplete month does not count, so a run from 5 March to 20 September gives you six completed months, not six and a half.
Then apply the rounding rule, which is where people lose or gain a day. If the leftover fraction is less than one-half, round down. If it is one-half or more, round up to a full day. So 3.33 becomes 3 days, while 3.5 becomes 4 days. Run the raw multiplication first, then round once at the end.
Rather do the maths by machine, our salary and pay calculator helps you sanity-check what a part-year of work is worth in take-home terms once your prorated leave is settled.
You join on 1 February 2026 and resign with last day 31 May 2026. That is four completed months in your first year, where the entitlement is seven days. The sum is (4 / 12) x 7 = 2.33 days. The fraction 0.33 is below 0.5, so you round down to 2 days of paid leave.
You are in your fourth year of service, so your full-year entitlement is ten days, and you resign after working six completed months of the current leave cycle. The sum is (6 / 12) x 10 = 5 days exactly, no rounding needed. Had it been seven months, (7 / 12) x 10 = 5.83, which rounds up to 6 days.
Unused prorated leave is not automatically lost when you go. If you have earned more days than you have taken, the standard practice is encashment, where the employer pays you the gross daily rate for each unused day. MOM's daily-rate formula is (12 x monthly gross rate of pay) divided by (52 x average days you work in a week).
Gross rate of pay here means your fixed monthly salary plus regular allowances. It excludes overtime, bonuses, commissions, and the annual wage supplement. Worked on a five-day week earning $4,000 a month, your daily rate is (12 x 4,000) / (52 x 5) = $184.62, so three unused days pay out at about $553. This sits alongside any salary-in-lieu of notice you negotiate and is treated as additional wages for CPF.
The flip side: if you have taken more leave than you have earned by your last day, the employer can deduct the overdrawn days from your final pay. That is why running the proration sum before you tender resignation matters, so you know whether your last payslip owes you cash or claws some back. Pair it with our full employee benefits guide to see how leave, public holidays, and overtime fit together.
Notice period counts. When you resign and serve out notice, those weeks are included in your completed months for the proration sum, so do not write them off. Quitting without serving notice is different: you have broken the contract, so the employer is not obliged to encash your leave and may instead claim compensation in lieu of notice from you.
No-pay leave does not. Any approved unpaid leave is excluded from your service count, so a stretch of no-pay leave shrinks the completed months that feed the formula. Carry-forward and forfeiture also depend on your status: lower-wage employees under Part IV of the Act can carry unused leave forward for up to twelve months, while everyone else takes whatever their contract states. Forfeiture is allowed only in narrow cases, such as being absent for more than 20% of working days without permission, or dismissal for misconduct.
If you are timing a job move around a baby, prorated annual leave is the small piece; the government-paid schemes are the big one. For Singaporean children born from 1 April 2026, eligible parents can draw up to 30 weeks of government-paid parental leave in the first year: 16 weeks of maternity leave, 4 weeks of paternity leave, and a new 10 weeks of shared parental leave, with the government share capped at $2,500 a week. Those schemes do not prorate the way annual leave does, so do not confuse the two.
The practical move is to stack them. Use your accrued and prorated annual leave to extend time at home beyond the statutory parental blocks, and line up the cash side early. A new arrival also opens Baby Bonus and CDA payouts and childcare subsidies worth far more than a few encashed leave days, so treat the leave sum as the appetiser, not the main course.
MOM prorates annual leave as completed months of service divided by 12, multiplied by your full-year entitlement. An incomplete month is ignored, and you round the result: below 0.5 rounds down, 0.5 or more rounds up to a full day. So four months on a seven-day entitlement gives (4/12) x 7 = 2.33, which rounds to 2 days.
No. You must complete at least three months of continuous service with the employer before you qualify for paid annual leave under the Employment Act. Once you clear that three-month gate, leave is counted from your first day of work, and the proration formula reaches back across every completed month from your start date.
Usually yes, if you serve your notice period. Earned but unused days are paid at your gross daily rate, calculated as (12 x monthly gross pay) divided by (52 x days worked per week). If you resign without serving notice, the employer is not obliged to encash the leave and may instead seek compensation in lieu of notice from you.
Yes. When you resign and serve out your notice, those weeks are included in the completed months used for the proration calculation, so the leave keeps accruing during notice. Approved no-pay leave is the opposite case: it is excluded from your service count and reduces the months that feed the formula.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.