Annual leave and public holidays, and what an employer must grant

Two things about annual leave and public holidays in Singapore are widely misstated, and both of them cost money. The first is who is entitled. A large amount of published guidance still treats paid annual leave and paid public holidays as something only lower-paid “Part IV” staff receive, which has been wrong since 1 April 2019. The second is what an employer owes when a holiday lands awkwardly: on a rest day, on a non-working Saturday, or on a day someone is asked to come in anyway. Those are three different answers, not one. Both questions end in the same place, which is the leave record and the itemised payslip that has to show the result correctly.

Every covered employee gets leave and holidays, whatever they earn

Start with the correction, because it decides who the rest of this article applies to. MOM’s own summary of the 2019 amendments is unambiguous: from 1 April 2019, all employees in Singapore, with the exception of seafarers, domestic workers and public officers, are covered for core provisions including minimum days of annual leave and paid public holidays and sick leave. Salary is not a gate. Neither is job title. A general manager on S$14,000 a month is entitled to statutory annual leave and 11 paid public holidays on exactly the same footing as a warehouse assistant on S$2,200. The same amendment brought sick and hospitalisation leave inside the same coverage.

What the salary caps still govern is Part IV of the Employment Act, which the Act’s current revised edition numbers Part 4. Section 35 applies it to a workman earning a monthly basic salary of S$4,500 or less, and to every employee other than a workman or a person in a managerial or executive position who receives a salary not exceeding S$2,600 a month. Part IV is where rest days, hours of work and overtime live. That is a separate subject with its own arithmetic.

For leave and holidays, Part IV decides exactly two things, and it is worth being precise about which two. It decides which carry-forward and forfeiture mechanic binds unused annual leave. And it decides whether partial, hours-based time off in lieu is a lawful option when an employee works a public holiday. Nothing else. A handbook telling an executive they have no statutory leave entitlement because they sit outside Part IV is wrong, and has been for seven years.

The scale, the three-month gate and pro-ration

Section 88A(1) sets the floor. An employee who has served an employer for at least 3 months is entitled to 7 days of paid annual leave for the first 12 months of continuous service, an additional day for every subsequent 12 months, subject to a maximum of 14 days. MOM publishes the same scale year by year: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, then 14 from the eighth year onwards. Below three months of service there is no statutory entitlement to draw on. Above 14 days, everything is contractual.

Between 3 and 12 months, leave is pro-rated: completed months of service divided by 12, multiplied by the annual entitlement. Fractions of a day below one-half round down, and one-half or more rounds up. MOM’s worked example is four completed months against a 10-day entitlement, which gives 3.33 days and is paid as 3.

Two details decide the completed-months count, and both are easy to get backwards. Approved unpaid leave is excluded, so it pushes the count down. A resigning employee’s notice period is included, so it pushes the count up. MOM’s own example runs both at once: a 12-day entitlement, two weeks of unpaid leave in March, resignation on 1 August with one month’s notice served to 31 August. March drops out, August counts, seven completed months survive, and the pro-rated entitlement is 7 days.

Two further points catch shift employers in particular. Leave is charged as a full day even when taken on a half working day, unless the employer’s own policy chooses to treat it as a half day. And where shifts run longer than eight hours, one day of annual leave equals the actual working day, so a 12-hour shift consumes 12 hours of leave. Everything paid under this section is paid at the gross rate of pay, which MOM defines as the total money including allowances due under the contract of service, excluding overtime, bonuses and annual wage supplements, reimbursed special expenses, productivity incentive payments, and travelling, food and housing allowances.

Carry it forward, forfeit it, or pay it out

Section 88A(6) binds employers of Part IV-covered staff: the employer must grant, and the employee must take, paid annual leave no later than 12 months after the end of every 12 months of continuous service, and leave not taken by then ceases to be an entitlement. In plain terms, unused leave carries forward for one further year and may be forfeited after that. For everyone outside Part IV the Act is silent, and MOM points the employee to their contract on whether unused leave is encashed, carried forward or forfeited. That silence is the employer’s decision to make and to write down, which is exactly why leaving it unwritten produces the argument.

Forfeiture of the statutory entitlement itself has two grounds and no others. Section 88A(5) forfeits it where the employee absents themselves from work without the employer’s permission, or without reasonable excuse, for more than 20% of the working days in the period in which the entitlement accrues. MOM adds the second: dismissal on the grounds of misconduct. Because those are the only two, an employer cannot invent a third for the statutory minimum. A policy stating that leave lapses if not applied for by March is enforceable against contractual leave granted above the floor, never against the floor itself.

MOM sets out one further rule that sits beside these rather than inside them. An employee absent for more than 2 working days continuously without approval has breached the contract, must pay salary in lieu of notice, and the employer is not required to encash their annual leave. That turns on a single continuous absence rather than on an accrual percentage, so both rules can apply to the same person and neither substitutes for the other.

On payment at the end of employment, read the statute as written. Section 88A(8) requires an employer who dismisses an employee on any ground other than misconduct, before all paid annual leave has been taken, to pay the gross rate of pay for every day of leave not taken. MOM’s plain-English pages do not separately spell out the ordinary resignation case in those words. In practice, expect to pay out unused statutory leave whenever employment ends other than through dismissal for misconduct or the absence breach above, and treat the contract as the governing document for anything granted beyond the minimum. Be sceptical of the multi-step encashment formula that circulates on HR vendor sites attributed to MOM. We could not find it on any MOM page. Gross rate of pay for each day of unused leave is the sourced statement, and it is enough.

One more claim is worth killing on sight. Several vendor sites state that section 88A allows an employer to direct an employee to take annual leave on 14 days’ notice. The text of section 88A on Singapore Statutes Online contains no such provision, no 14-day period, and no employer-direction mechanic of any kind. Scheduling leave against an employee’s wishes is a matter of contract and agreement, not a statutory power sitting in the section people keep citing for it.

The 11 gazetted public holidays for 2027

Section 88(1) gives every covered employee 11 paid public holidays a year, and MOM has gazetted the 2027 calendar, so these are confirmed dates rather than projections.

Five of them land in the first quarter. New Year’s Day falls on Friday 1 January 2027. Chinese New Year runs Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February 2027, and because the second day lands on a Sunday, Monday 8 February 2027 is a paid holiday too. Hari Raya Puasa is Wednesday 10 March 2027 and Good Friday is Friday 26 March 2027.

The second quarter brings three, clustered inconveniently for May rosters: Labour Day on Saturday 1 May 2027, Hari Raya Haji on Monday 17 May 2027 and Vesak Day on Thursday 20 May 2027. National Day is the only holiday of the third quarter, on Monday 9 August 2027. The year closes with Deepavali on Thursday 28 October 2027 and Christmas Day on Saturday 25 December 2027.

Three of those fall on a Saturday: the first day of Chinese New Year, Labour Day and Christmas Day. MOM’s calendar gazettes no Monday in lieu for any of the three, which is not the same thing as owing nothing, as the next section explains. Dates beyond 2027 have not been gazetted as at 21 August 2026, so any 2028 calendar already circulating is somebody’s forecast. The gazetted ones belong in the payroll compliance calendar now, rather than in December.

A rest day and a non-working day are not the same thing

This is the distinction that most often goes wrong inside a payroll run, and the two remedies are not interchangeable.

Under section 88(1)(b), where a public holiday falls on a rest day, the working day next following that rest day is a paid holiday. It is automatic and no election arises. Under section 88(1)(c), where a public holiday falls on a day the employee is not required to work under the contract of service, a non-working day, the employer may either pay the employee for that holiday at the gross rate of pay or give a day off in substitution. That one is an election, it belongs to the employer, and doing neither is not among the options.

Rest day is a defined Part IV term, one day in each period of seven on which the employee is not required to work. A non-working day is contractual, most often the Saturday of a five-day week. Which of the two a given holiday falls on depends on that employee’s actual work-week structure rather than on a calendar assumption, which is why the three Saturday holidays in 2027 do not resolve to one company-wide answer.

Holiday pay is not unconditional either. Under section 88(2) and (3), an employee absent on the working day immediately preceding or immediately succeeding a public holiday, without the employer’s prior consent or a reasonable excuse, loses that holiday’s pay outright. A holiday falling inside a period of unpaid leave taken at the employee’s own request is likewise unpaid. Paid leave has no such effect: MOM’s own example is that unpaid leave on 8 August alone does not disqualify a 9 August holiday, while unpaid leave running from 8 to 10 August does.

Whether a public holiday falling inside a block of annual leave should be charged against the leave balance is a question no MOM FAQ we could find answers directly. Reading sections 88(1) and 88(2) together, holiday pay is denied only where the day sits inside unpaid leave, not paid annual leave, which points to the holiday not being charged as a leave day. That is a reasoned reading of the statute rather than a published MOM answer, and it should be settled in the leave policy in advance rather than in the middle of a dispute.

What you owe when someone works a public holiday

Section 88(4) sets the base rule: an employee required to work on a public holiday must be paid an extra day’s salary at the basic rate of pay for one day’s work, on top of the gross rate of pay for that day and a travelling allowance for one day where one is payable. MOM breaks the same rule into three scenarios, and which applies turns on what that day was for that particular employee.

• Worked on a normal working day: an extra day’s salary at the basic rate, plus the gross rate of pay for the holiday, plus overtime pay for hours beyond normal working hours.
• Worked on a non-working day, typically the Saturday of a five-day week: overtime for the extra hours, plus either one extra day’s salary at the gross rate or a day off in substitution.
• Worked on a rest day: rest-day payment applies, with overtime where relevant, and the next working day becomes the paid holiday instead.

Which of the three applies is an employee-by-employee question, not a calendar one, because it depends on each person’s contracted work week. Reconciling that across a mixed roster is payroll work, and it is the part we take on.

Then the Part IV distinction, which is the second thing the salary caps decide. Section 88(4A) permits time off in lieu, and only for employees Part IV does not cover. For those employees the employer pays the gross rate of pay for the day and may give, in place of a substitute day off or an extra day’s salary at the basic rate, part of a day off for such number of hours as the two agree; and where there is no agreement, 4 hours off if the employee worked 4 hours or less on the holiday, or a day off on a working day if they worked more than 4 hours. For a Part IV-covered employee that partial option is not lawfully available, and the alternatives to an extra day’s salary are a full day off in substitution or a holiday in lieu. Offering a Part IV-covered warehouse team four hours off for a four-hour holiday shift is the precise error this subsection creates.

Part-time staff, and the band that cannot encash

Part-time employees, meaning those working fewer than 35 hours a week, get public holidays pro-rated rather than in whole days. MOM’s formula divides the part-timer’s working hours per year by a comparable full-timer’s working hours per year, multiplies by the full-timer’s number of public holiday days, then multiplies by the number of working hours in a day. MOM’s worked example takes a part-timer on 22 hours a week against a full-timer’s 44 hours. The annual hours ratio, 22 times 52 over 44 times 52, is one half; applied to 11 public holidays at 8 hours a day, that gives 44 hours of public holiday entitlement across the year. Half the hours, half the entitlement, which is the point of the formula.

One carve-out sits directly across a very common roster shape. MOM confirms that part-time employees working at least 5 days a week and between 30 and 34 hours a week cannot encash their annual public holiday entitlement into their hourly gross rate of pay, unlike other part-timers, for whom encashment by agreement, stated in the contract, is available. A near-full-time part-timer covering most of a service or retail week frequently sits inside exactly that band, which also matters for seasonal and peak-period hiring where rosters are built around coverage rather than around hour thresholds.

Where this gets difficult

None of the rules above are hard in a single case. They get hard across a workforce, because almost every answer is per-employee: whether Part IV covers them, whether their Saturday is a non-working day or a rest day, whether their notice period counts toward pro-ration, whether they sit inside the 30 to 34 hour band, whether the day before a holiday was approved leave or an unexplained absence. None of that is visible on a calendar. All of it lands on a payslip.

We run payroll processing for Singapore employers, and leave balances, holiday pay and the pro-ration on a leaver’s final payslip come inside that rather than sitting beside it, alongside the Government-Paid Leave claims that reconcile against the same records. Where the leave policy itself needs writing, that is HR Solutions work rather than payroll work. Keeping all of it in-house is perfectly reasonable at a small headcount. If that is the plan, put the 2027 dates in the payroll calendar today, decide your position on Saturday holidays and on holidays inside a leave block before anyone asks, and work from MOM’s own pages rather than a secondary summary, this one included.