On S'pore salaries

I get many queries from friends and friends of friends asking about the Singapore salaries of varied posts, all linked to a job seeker's desire to write down a realistic figure in the 'expected salary' portion of his/her Singapore job applications.

As can be reasonably expected, all I could offer in this department were intelligent (hopefully) guess-timates based loosely on the extrapolations one can make when reading local newspapers about the salaries and financial habits of all sorts of people in the news, among other things. It's not a scientific figuring out of salaries for sure but I've always taken time to be extra careful when quoting a figure. I don't want to cause one to lose his or her chance at a job because of a laughably high expected salary, much less cause one the distress of finding out that he had priced himself too low due to ignorance or plain laziness in finding out for sure what his post's salary rate should be (as I strongly think was my case when I started here).

But now I think we can all kiss my guess-timates goodbye in favour of actual survey results. The Ministry of Manpower here has on its website the 2005 Report on Wages in Singapore. Browse it and see the mean (or average) and median salaries of selected occupations in all industries, sorted by industry, gender and age.

So if a graphic designer, for example, were wondering what average salary his compatriots were earning here, a quick check at Monthly basic and gross wages of selected occupations in all industries, June 2005, would show that for his occupation (listed under Technicians and Associate Professionals), latest data shows an average basic salary of S$2,419 and an average gross salary of $2,562. He can cross-refer also to the age table, and see what graphic designers in specific age brackets earn on the average.

Neat, huh? (God bless Singapore for their transparency and efficiency!)

Here's a list of other occupations and their average salaries from the same table. (S$1 = Php33.08):

Advertising and PR Manager - S$5,403

Creative Director (Advertising) - $4,907

Engineering Manager - $6,224

Marketing Manager - $6,190

Accountant - $3,844

Dentist - $4,637

Editor (Newspapers and Periodicals) - $5,177

Mechanical Eng'r - $3,634

Network and Computer Systems Administrator - $3,279

Systems Programmer - $3,436

Teacher of the mentally-handicapped - $2,303

Medical diagnostic radiographer - $3,005

HR personnel - $3,074

Bank clerk - $1,832

Seaman - $1,455

Store hand - $1,297

Do check out the resource and the Ministry's other publications online.