Foreign fresh grad asks: Is SGD3,600 a decent salary in Singapore?

A graduate from the Philippines, planning on moving to Singapore, polled the Internet asking if SGD 3,600 amounted to a decent salary here.

His question was picked up by netizen Vernon Tay, who shared it on social media and said, “An FT posed this question in quora. And this is the reason why i don’t think many FTs are paid lower than locals. If so, why is the hiring of FTs so rampant here when so many locals are out of jobs and are the ones who are more than qualified to take up these jobs?”.

According to an article in Business Insider Singapore, the median monthly pay for local fresh grads in 2018 was S$3,500 – up from S$3,400 in 2017, and S$3,300 in 2016.

Local graduates’ full-time employment rate was also found to be higher in 2018 than 2017, 2016

According to the data, 81.2 per cent of local fresh graduates in 2018 found full-time jobs, higher than 78.4 per cent in 2017 and 89.5 per cent in 2016.

However, it was also recently revealed that in the past five years, Singapore’s government spent about S$130 million per year on international students studying in local schools and autonomous universities.

Contrary to this spending, during the budget reading, it was also announced that the Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) – which sets out the maximum permitted ratio of foreign workers to the total workforce that a company is allowed to hire, will be reduced for the services sector in two steps: from 40 per cent to 38 per cent on Jan 1 next year, and to 35 per cent on Jan 1, 2021. DRCs for all other sectors will remain unchanged.

Netizens also weighed in on the issue. /TISG

Read related: S’poreans irate after learning MOE spent S$130 million on foreign student scholarships & annual funding