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 official quota calculator on Work Permit Online does the live sums against your CPF records, but you can reproduce it on a napkin, and you should, because the LQS jumps from S$1,600 to S$1,800 on 1 July 2026 and that quietly shrinks many small employers' quota overnight.
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.
The official tool is on MOM's Work Permit Online portal, which reads your actual CPF contribution records to count locals. Run it before any new application, because it shows your real-time quota balance, not a theoretical one. 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.
Until 30 June 2026 the LQS is S$1,600 a month. From 1 July 2026 it rises to S$1,800. 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. Business owners, people paid by three or more employers, and platform workers are excluded.
| 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.
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 3.5 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% (5:1 framing) | 15% | ~5 per local |
| Process | ~83% (5:1 framing) | 15% | ~5 per local |
| Marine Shipyard | ~77.7% (3.5:1 framing) | 15% | ~3.5 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. 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 bites: any local you were paying between S$1,600 and S$1,799 falls 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). The figures below are indicative monthly rates as of June 2026, drawn from MOM's published levy schedule, and you should confirm your exact bill against MOM before committing.
The S Pass levy was harmonised to a single rate of S$650 a month across all sectors from 1 January 2026, with a daily rate of about S$21.37 for part-month workers. Separately, the S Pass minimum qualifying salary rises on 1 July 2026 to S$3,600 in general sectors and S$4,000 in financial services, 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 | Non-MYE | S$600 | S$950 |
| Marine Shipyard | Standard | S$300 | S$500 |
| Process | Standard | S$300 | S$450 |
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 push your whole foreign workforce into a cheaper tier, which is a real lever, not a rounding error.
Three dated changes move the numbers this year. The LQS rises 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 qualifying salary rises the same day. The S Pass levy already moved to the harmonised S$650 from January.
The defensive play is the same one a household uses when a fixed cost steps up: model it before the date, not after. Pull your Work Permit Online quota balance now, list every local paid between S$1,600 and S$1,799, and decide whether a raise to S$1,800 is cheaper than losing the quota that local supports. 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 lives inside the Work Permit Online portal on mom.gov.sg. It reads your company's CPF contribution records to count qualifying locals and returns your live Work Permit and S Pass quota balance, 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 is S$1,600 until 30 June 2026 and S$1,800 from 1 July 2026.
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 rises to S$1,800 on 1 July 2026, any local paid between S$1,600 and S$1,799 drops from a full head to half a head in your count. That shrinks your counted local base, which lowers 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 — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.