How to Calculate Overtime Pay in Singapore

Statutory overtime in Singapore is 1.5 times the hourly basic rate, and the hourly basic rate is the monthly basic salary divided by 190.67. A $2,000 clerk who works one OT hour is owed $2,000 ÷ 190.67 × 1.5 = $15.73. It applies only to Employment Act Part IV employees — workmen earning up to $4,500 basic and non-workmen up to $2,600 — under MOM's hours-of-work rules, and it must be paid within 14 days of the salary period ending, a longer leash than the 7 days for ordinary salary.

Last reviewed 10 June 2026 · Source: Ministry of Manpower (Employment Act, Part IV).

Step 1 — Check whether the employee is entitled to OT at all

Statutory overtime is not universal. It covers only Part IV employees under the Employment Act: a workman (manual labour) with basic monthly salary up to $4,500, or a non-workman (a clerk, a receptionist) with basic monthly salary up to $2,600. The threshold is basic salary — it excludes overtime, bonus, AWS, productivity incentives, reimbursements and allowances.

Category	Who	Basic salary threshold	Statutory OT?
Workman	Manual labour	≤ $4,500	Yes
Non-workman	Non-manual, non-PME (clerk, receptionist)	≤ $2,600	Yes
PME	Managers, executives, professionals	Any	No — contractual only

Managers, executives and professionals (PMEs) sit outside Part IV entirely, at any salary. If your $3,200 operations executive stays late, the law does not require OT pay — anything you pay is whatever the employment contract says. Many bosses get caught the other way round: a $2,400 admin assistant is covered, and her OT is not optional.

One line decides everything else in this guide: workman ≤ $4,500, non-workman ≤ $2,600, PME never.

What makes someone a PME

The label is about function, not title. MOM treats an employee as managerial when they carry executive and supervisory functions — they decide on recruitment, discipline, termination, performance assessment and reward, or they formulate strategies and policies for the company. Professionals are those whose work needs tertiary-level specialised knowledge.

Calling a $2,500 storekeeper an "Inventory Executive" does not move him out of Part IV. If he supervises no one and decides nothing, he is a non-workman with full statutory OT rights, and the job title on the contract will not survive a MOM inspection.

What counts as basic salary for the threshold

The threshold tests basic monthly salary only. For a workman, MOM's definition excludes overtime, bonus, AWS (the 13th-month payment), productivity incentive payments, reimbursement of special expenses, and all allowances. A driver on $4,200 basic plus $600 of fixed allowances has a basic salary of $4,200 — inside the $4,500 threshold and covered, even though his payslip gross reads $4,800.

The same exclusions apply when you compute the OT rate itself in Step 2. Basic in, allowances out, both times.

Step 2 — Work out the hourly basic rate

For a monthly-rated employee, MOM's formula is fixed:

Quantity	Formula	$2,000/month example
Hourly basic rate	(12 × monthly basic salary) ÷ (52 × 44)	(12 × $2,000) ÷ 2,288 = $10.49
Shortcut	monthly basic ÷ 190.67	$2,000 ÷ 190.67 = $10.49
OT hourly rate (1.5×)	hourly basic × 1.5	$10.49 × 1.5 = $15.73

The 190.67 divisor is not arbitrary — it is 52 weeks × 44 ordinary hours ÷ 12 months. Use basic salary only: no allowances, no commission, no bonus in the base. Padding the base with allowances overstates every OT hour you ever pay.

Step 3 — Apply the right multiplier

Situation	Rate	Example ($10.49/hr base)
OT beyond 8 hrs/day or 44 hrs/week (normal day)	1.5×	$15.73/hr
Work on a rest day, employer required it	2.0×	$20.97/hr
Work on a rest day, employee came in voluntarily	1.0×	$10.49/hr

Ordinary hours are capped at 8 per day and 44 per week — anything beyond either line is OT, even if no single day crossed 8 hours. The 1.5× is a statutory floor, not a ceiling: you may contract to pay more, never less.

Note the rest-day split. Who initiated the work decides whether it is double pay or plain pay.

The weekly line trips people up more often than the daily one. An employee who works five 8-hour days and then a 6-hour Saturday never exceeded 8 hours in a day, but the week totals 46 hours — those last 2 hours are OT at 1.5×. Track both counters, not just the daily clock.

Alternate-week arrangements

The Employment Act allows a schedule where one week runs up to 48 hours, provided the total over any two consecutive weeks stays within 88 hours (S38(4)). A workshop running 48 hours in week one and 40 in week two is legal with no OT triggered, because the 2-week block holds at 88. Push week two to 44 and the arrangement breaks — 92 hours across the block means the excess is overtime.

This is an arrangement you adopt deliberately, in the contract or roster. You cannot reach for it retroactively to reclassify a heavy week as OT-free.

Step 4 — Apply the $13.60/hr cap where it bites

For a non-workman whose basic salary exceeds $2,600 a month, any OT you compute is capped at an hourly base of $13.60 — the rate equivalent of a $2,600 salary, per MOM's salary-limit FAQ. At 1.5× that is at most $20.40 per OT hour.

In practice the cap matters when a contract extends OT terms to staff above the statutory threshold, or when a salary revision pushes a covered employee past $2,600 mid-year. Workmen carry no equivalent cap below their own $4,500 threshold.

Step 5 — Respect the hours limits

Overtime is bounded three ways under Section 38:

• 72 OT hours per calendar month — the hard monthly cap (S38(8)). MOM can grant industry-specific exemptions; assume 72 unless you hold one in writing.
• 12 hours per day including OT (S38(5)).
• ≥45-minute meal break after 8 hours of continuous work (S38(1)).

Rest-day or public-holiday work within normal daily hours does not count toward the 72 — only the hours beyond normal daily hours on those days do.

If a pay period shows more than 72 OT hours, the fix is rostering, not creative payroll.

Shift workers count differently

A shift worker under Section 40 has no fixed weekly cap. Instead, hours are averaged over a rolling 3-week window: the average must not exceed 44 hours a week, which is 132 hours per any continuous 3-week block. OT is whatever lands beyond 132 in that window. The 12-hour daily ceiling still applies.

A shift worker's rest day is also defined differently — a continuous 30-hour period, not a midnight-to-midnight calendar day. A roster that ends Saturday 10pm and resumes Monday 6am clears it; one that resumes Sunday 11pm does not.

Part-timers get OT too — in two tiers

A part-timer who works beyond her contracted hours is paid at her normal hourly rate up to the point where a full-timer's daily or weekly hours would begin. Beyond that line, the statutory 1.5× kicks in — same as anyone else. A part-timer contracted for 4 hours who works 10 gets 4 normal hours, 4 more at her hourly rate (up to the FT 8-hour mark), then 2 at 1.5×.

The common mistake is paying flat rate all the way. Past full-time hours, a part-timer is in OT like everyone else.

Step 6 — Pay it within 14 days

Ordinary salary is due within 7 days after the salary period ends; overtime gets 14 days. The longer deadline exists for businesses that finalise OT claims after payroll cut-off — most simply settle OT in the same run as the month it was worked, which is cleaner for CPF too, since OT pay is wages and attracts CPF and SDL like the rest of the packet.

Miss the deadline and you are in breach of the Employment Act — the same exposure as late salary.

Step 7 — Keep the records MOM expects

The Employment (Employment Records, Key Employment Terms and Pay Slips) Regulations 2016 require, for each Part IV employee:

1. Working hours per day, including breaks
2. OT hours worked per period
3. OT pay amount per period
4. OT period dates, if different from the salary period

Keep these for 2 years for current employees and 1 year after a former employee leaves. The same figures must appear on the itemised payslip — OT hours and OT pay are mandatory payslip items — so payroll software that stores and prints them discharges both obligations in one place.

Worked example 1 — $2,300 non-workman, 10 OT hours

Line	Calculation	Amount
Hourly basic rate	$2,300 ÷ 190.67	$12.06
OT hourly rate	$12.06 × 1.5	$18.09
OT pay (10 hrs)	$18.09 × 10	$180.90
Gross for the month	$2,300 + $180.90	$2,480.90

Hours check: 10 OT hours is well inside the 72-hour monthly cap, and at $2,300 basic the $13.60 cap never engages.

Worked example 2 — $4,200 workman, 18 OT hours plus a rest-day call-in

A technician on $4,200 basic works 18 weekday OT hours, and you call him in for 5 hours on his rest day (within normal daily hours, so those 5 are paid at the rest-day rate, not as OT):

Line	Calculation	Amount
Hourly basic rate	$4,200 ÷ 190.67	$22.03
Weekday OT (18 hrs × 1.5×)	$22.03 × 1.5 × 18	$594.81
Rest-day work, employer-required (5 hrs × 2.0×)	$22.03 × 2.0 × 5	$220.30
Total above basic	$594.81 + $220.30	$815.11

Two things to notice. The workman keeps his full uncapped rate — $22.03 stays the base because his $4,200 basic is under the $4,500 workman threshold and the $13.60 cap is a non-workman rule. And the 5 rest-day hours within normal daily hours do not count toward his 72-hour OT cap — only his 18 weekday OT hours do.

Paying above the statutory rate

MOM's 1.5× is a floor — "not less than 1.5 times the hourly basic rate" — so a contract can promise 2× weekday OT or OT for a PME, and many do as a hiring lever. Those above-statutory amounts are contractual wages: pay them as agreed, show them on the payslip, and remember they attract CPF like any other wage.

What the contract cannot do is undercut the floor for a covered employee. A clause paying a $2,400 clerk "flat hourly rate for all extra hours" is void to the extent it pays less than 1.5× — the statutory rate applies over it.

Generous is fine. Below the floor is unenforceable — the employee can claim the shortfall back through MOM for every recorded hour, with your own roster as the evidence.

The three mistakes that surface in MOM salary claims

1. Misclassification — treating a covered non-workman as a "PME" by job title. The claim is back-paid OT, computed at 1.5× for every recorded hour.
2. Wrong base — computing the hourly rate on gross instead of basic, or on basic including allowances. Use basic only, ÷190.67.
3. Missing records — no daily-hours log means the employee's own account of hours is what the claim runs on. Keep the records in Step 7 and the dispute is arithmetic, not testimony.

Before the next payrun, classify every employee once — workman, non-workman or PME — and store the classification. Every OT decision afterwards is arithmetic.