A non-workman in Singapore earning S$4,000 a month works two hours of overtime. Their employer looks up the rate, finds the Ministry of Manpower's published figure of S$13.60 an hour, and pays S$40.80.
The Employment Act contains no such cap. It contains no hourly figure at all, and the one computation cap it used to have was deleted in 2019.
What the Act says
Overtime is computed from the Fourth Schedule, which gives a formula rather than a number. For a monthly-rated employee it is the employee's own pay:
hourly basic rate = (12 × monthly basic rate of pay) ÷ (52 × 44)The Schedule once had a third item that did cap the input. It read "a non-workman whose monthly basic rate of pay is $2,250 or more — 12 × $2,250 ÷ (52 × 44)", and in the current Act that item reads, in full:
"3. [Deleted by Act 55 of 2018]"
The deletion took effect on 1 April 2019. Since then the Schedule has computed every monthly-rated employee's overtime from their actual salary.
Where S$2,600 does appear
It appears in section 35, and it decides something different: whether the overtime provisions apply to you at all. The section extends them to a non-workman "who receives a salary not exceeding $2,600 a month". Workmen have their own threshold of S$4,500.
⚠️ Those are entitlement thresholds, not computation caps. Earn above them and the Act's overtime provisions do not reach you; earn below them and your overtime is computed on your own salary, with nothing standing between it and the formula. The Ministry's own FAQ on salary limits describes S$2,600 and S$4,500 exactly this way, with no mention of a cap.
The figure does not reconcile with the formula beside it
The Ministry's overtime page states the cap and prints the Fourth Schedule formula further down the same page. Running one against the other:
(12 × 2,600) ÷ (52 × 44) = 31,200 ÷ 2,288 = 13.6364…
published hourly figure 13.60
two hours at the formula rate 40.91
two hours as the page's worked example pays 40.80Eleven cents on a two-hour example is not money anyone will miss. It is useful as a check: a figure that does not reproduce from the formula printed beside it is not derived from that formula, which is the tell that it comes from somewhere else.
What this does not mean
It does not mean the published rate is unlawful to pay, or that anyone is being cheated. An employer may pay overtime at a higher rate than the Act requires, and for an employee earning above S$2,600 the Act sets no rate at all, so whatever the contract says governs.
⚠️ Nor does it mean the Ministry is wrong about entitlement. Its FAQ is accurate. The difficulty is that a second page states a cap the Act does not contain, and payroll guidance downstream repeats the cap rather than the FAQ.
What to do with it
If you are below the threshold, the number that governs your overtime is your own basic salary through the Fourth Schedule formula, and that is the figure to check a payslip against.
Two employees on identical hours can be computed from very different bases, and it is worth knowing which one you are. A workman on S$4,500 is computed on S$4,500, which is about S$23.60 an hour. A non-workman is capped by the published figure at S$13.60 — a gap that comes from the guidance rather than from the Schedule.
Both thresholds are worth watching for a different reason. S$4,500 has stood since 1 April 2014 and S$2,600 since 1 April 2019, and each carries the words "or such other amount as the Minister may prescribe". Neither has been moved.
Where this comes from
The formula, the deleted item and the section 35 thresholds were read from the Employment Act 1968 on Singapore Statutes Online, in the version in force at the time of writing, alongside the historical version in force on 1 April 2017 which still carries the S$2,250 item. The published cap and its worked example are from the Ministry of Manpower's hours-of-work page.
⚠️ Counts from the Act's own text: "13.60" does not appear, "2,250" does not appear, and "2,600" appears twice — both times as a coverage threshold. "Fourth Schedule" appears four times.
We have not established why the published figure is 13.60 rather than 13.6364, and no basis for the rounding is given on the page. What would change this is the Minister prescribing new thresholds, or the guidance being reconciled with the Schedule.
