A foreign worker quota calculator answers one question: for every local you employ, how many Work Permit and S Pass holders can you legally hire? The maths is simple once you have three inputs. First, your count of qualifying local employees, set by the Local Qualifying Salary (LQS). Second, your sector's Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC), the cap on foreign workers as a share of your total workforce. Third, the S Pass sub-DRC, a tighter cap inside that. The Ministry of Manpower's quota calculator on mom.gov.sg does the planning sums and Work Permit Online shows your live balance from your CPF records, but you can reproduce it on a napkin, and you should, because the LQS rose from S$1,600 to S$1,800 on 1 July 2026 and that quietly shrank many small employers' quota as the count of locals updated.
Singapore controls low- and mid-wage foreign hiring with two levers working together: a quota (the DRC) and a price (the levy). A quota calculator stitches them. It takes your local headcount, multiplies by the ratio your sector is allowed, and returns the maximum number of Work Permit holders, the maximum number of S Pass holders, and the monthly levy you would owe at that mix.
Employment Pass holders sit outside this entirely. There is no EP quota and no EP levy. EP hiring is gated by salary plus the COMPASS points system, not by how many locals you employ. So a quota calculator only matters if you are hiring Work Permit or S Pass staff in the five eligible sectors: Construction, Manufacturing, Marine Shipyard, Process, and Services.
MOM has two official tools. Its quota calculator on mom.gov.sg is for planning. Your live quota balance is in the Work Permit Online portal, which counts locals from your CPF records as an average over the last three months and updates weekly. Check it before any new application, because it shows the balance MOM will actually apply. For a quick estimate before you log in, the three-step method below gets you within a worker or two.
Only Singaporeans and Permanent Residents who earn enough count toward your quota, and the threshold is the Local Qualifying Salary. The rule is a sliding count, not a yes/no, so a part-timer is not worthless and a token salary does not buy you quota.
The LQS was S$1,600 a month until 30 June 2026 and has been S$1,800 since 1 July 2026. The counting rule scales with it: a local earning the full LQS or more counts as one head, a local earning at least half the LQS but below it counts as half a head, and anyone below half is not counted at all. Owners of sole proprietorships and partnerships and platform workers are excluded, and one local can count toward the quota of at most two companies.
| Monthly salary of the local employee | Until 30 Jun 2026 (LQS S$1,600) | From 1 Jul 2026 (LQS S$1,800) | Counts as |
|---|---|---|---|
| At or above the full LQS | S$1,600 and above | S$1,800 and above | 1 local |
| At least half the LQS, below full | S$800 to S$1,599 | S$900 to S$1,799 | 0.5 local |
| Below half the LQS | Below S$800 | Below S$900 | Not counted |
The Dependency Ratio Ceiling is the maximum share of your total workforce that can be foreign. Your total workforce here means local headcount plus foreign headcount, so the ceiling is expressed as a fraction of the whole, which is why employers often find the ratio-to-locals framing easier. Inside that overall ceiling sits the S Pass sub-DRC, a tighter cap on S Pass holders specifically: 10% of total workforce in Services and 15% in the other four sectors. Work Permit holders from China have their own sub-quota too: 8% of total workforce in Services and 25% in Manufacturing.
The practical shorthand most owners use: in Services you can have foreign workers up to 35% of your workforce, which works out to roughly one foreign worker for every two locals; Construction and Process allow up to about 5 foreign workers per local; Marine Shipyard about 3 per local; Manufacturing up to 60% of the workforce. The table below pairs each sector with both its overall DRC and its S Pass sub-cap.
| Sector | Overall DRC (max foreign share of workforce) | S Pass sub-DRC | Rough ratio to locals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Services | 35% | 10% | ~1 foreign per 2 locals |
| Manufacturing | 60% | 15% | ~1.5 foreign per local |
| Construction | 83.3% (5:1 framing) | 15% | ~5 per local |
| Process | 83.3% (5:1 framing) | 15% | ~5 per local |
| Marine Shipyard | 75% (3:1 framing) | 15% | ~3 per local |
Take a Services company, say a restaurant group, with 20 Singaporean and PR staff all paid above the LQS, so 20 counted locals. Total workforce is locals plus foreign hires, and the DRC caps foreign workers at 35% of that total. Solve it: if F is the number of foreign workers, F divided by (20 + F) must be at most 0.35. That gives a maximum of about 10 foreign workers in total.
Now split that 10 by the sub-DRC. S Pass holders are capped at 10% of the 30-person workforce, so about 3 S Pass holders, and the rest of the foreign headroom is Work Permit holders, of whom only about 2 (8% of 30) can be from China. Drop two of those locals to part-time below the LQS and your counted local base falls to roughly 18, which trims your total foreign ceiling and your S Pass slots with it. That is precisely why the July 2026 LQS rise to S$1,800 bit: any local you were paying between S$1,600 and S$1,799 fell from a full head to half a head, cutting your quota without anyone leaving.
If you would rather see the cash side of headcount decisions, our take-home salary calculator shows what a given gross pay nets after CPF, and the CPF contribution calculator confirms the employer CPF you owe on each local who keeps you within quota.
Quota tells you how many you can hire; the levy tells you what each one costs the government every month. Levy rises in tiers as you lean more heavily on foreign labour, and the rate depends on sector and on whether the worker is higher-skilled (R1) or basic-skilled (R2). Update, 13 October 2026: the construction, process and marine shipyard rows now give MOM's current rates, which for construction and process depend on the worker's source country, and the S Pass levy has been S$650 since 1 September 2025, not January 2026 as this guide said. The figures below are indicative monthly rates as of October 2026, drawn from MOM's published levy schedule, and you should confirm your exact bill against MOM before committing.
The S Pass levy has been a single rate of S$650 a month across all sectors and tiers since 1 September 2025, with a daily rate of S$21.37 for part-month workers. Separately, the S Pass minimum qualifying salary starts at S$3,300 (S$3,800 in financial services) for those aged 23 or below and rises with age; the starting points go up to S$3,600 and S$4,000 for new applications from 1 January 2027 and for renewals of passes expiring from 1 January 2028, so a worker who qualified at the old floor may need a raise to stay eligible.
| Sector | Tier | R1 higher-skilled | R2 basic-skilled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Services | Basic (up to 10%) | S$300 | S$450 |
| Services | Tier 2 (10-25%) | S$400 | S$600 |
| Services | Tier 3 (25-35%) | S$600 | S$800 |
| Manufacturing | Tier 1 (up to 25%) | S$250 | S$370 |
| Manufacturing | Tier 3 (50-60%) | S$550 | S$650 |
| Construction | Workers from Malaysia, North Asia or China | S$300 | S$700 |
| Construction | Workers from other source countries | S$500 | S$900 |
| Marine Shipyard | Standard | S$350 | S$500 |
| Process | Workers from Malaysia, North Asia or China | S$200 | S$450 |
| Process | Workers from other source countries | S$300 | S$650 |
Levy tiers are marginal, like income tax. If a Services employer's foreign share crosses into the 25-35% band, only the workers in that top band attract the higher Tier 3 rate, not the whole payroll. Keeping a few extra locals above the LQS can therefore move the workers at the margin out of the higher tier, which is a real lever, not a rounding error.
Two dated changes have already moved the numbers and two are still to come. The LQS rose to S$1,800 on 1 July 2026, shrinking the counted local base for any employer with staff in the old S$1,600 to S$1,799 band. The S Pass levy has been a flat S$650 since 1 September 2025. Next, the S Pass qualifying salary rises to S$3,600 (S$4,000 in financial services) for new applications from 1 January 2027. From 2028, MOM will merge the Services levy Tiers 1 and 2 at S$400 for higher-skilled and S$600 for basic-skilled workers, on a timeline it has not yet set.
The defensive play is the same one a household uses when a fixed cost steps up: model it before the date, not after. If you have not recounted since July, pull your Work Permit Online quota balance, list every local paid between S$1,600 and S$1,799, and raise them: since July the LQS is also the minimum pay for full-time locals at any firm that hires Work Permit, S Pass or Employment Pass holders, and part-timers must get at least S$10.50 an hour. Check any S Pass hire you plan for January 2027 or later against the new floor too, which starts at S$3,600 for those aged 23 or below and rises with age to S$5,100 at 45 and above. The same before-the-deadline discipline shows up in our CPF contribution rates guide, where a payroll change ripples into both employer cost and headcount math.
The Ministry of Manpower's quota calculator is on mom.gov.sg and is for planning. Your live Work Permit and S Pass quota balance is in the Work Permit Online portal, which counts qualifying locals from your CPF records, so it is more accurate than any third-party estimate.
A local earning the full Local Qualifying Salary or more counts as one head. One earning at least half the LQS but below the full amount counts as half a head. Below half, they are not counted. The LQS has been S$1,800 since 1 July 2026, up from S$1,600.
The Dependency Ratio Ceiling caps all foreign workers as a share of your total workforce, by sector, for example 35% in Services. The S Pass sub-DRC is a tighter cap inside that, limiting S Pass holders specifically to 10% of the workforce in Services and 15% in the other four sectors.
No. There is no quota and no levy for Employment Pass holders. EP hiring is controlled by minimum qualifying salary and the COMPASS points framework instead. The quota calculator only applies to Work Permit and S Pass holders in the five eligible sectors.
When the LQS rose to S$1,800 on 1 July 2026, any local paid between S$1,600 and S$1,799 dropped from a full head to half a head in your count. That shrank your counted local base, which lowered both your overall foreign worker ceiling and your S Pass slots, without anyone resigning.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change, so verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.
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