Freight Forwarder Salary Singapore: MOM 2025 Pay Bands
What does a freight forwarder earn in Singapore? According to the Ministry of Manpower's Occupational Wage Survey 2025, the median clearing and forwarding agent in transportation and storage earned S$4,259 gross a month in June 2025, and the median shipping clerk S$3,300. We also built a salary offer checker on those MOM pay bands. It matched an independent check in 12 of 12 test cases on 5 October 2026. These are official pay figures, not a promise of what you will be offered.
Most salary pages we checked give a single annual "average". PayScale, for example, shows S$41,271 for a freight forwarder in Singapore and says plainly that it is based on 11 salary profiles, last updated 15 December 2024. This page gives you the pay band for the job you are applying for, and a way to check an offer against it.
Checked 5 October 2026 · IFG Shipping
Key takeaways
The checker placed 12 of 12 constructed test offers exactly where an independent check did.
Clerical forwarding occupations had median basic pay of S$3,040 to S$3,297 in transport, according to MOM's June 2025 figures.
Compare basic with basic and gross with gross. Mixing the two is the easiest way to misread an offer.
The survey covers full-time staff only. Part-time pay, figures that include a bonus and annual figures can't be checked against it.
Sales and manager occupations pay more, according to the same survey.
What does a freight forwarder earn in Singapore?
"Freight forwarder" is not one job in the official statistics. MOM sorts people by occupation, and a forwarding firm employs clerks, officers, agents, salespeople and managers. The table below takes the occupations closest to forwarding work from MOM's Table 4.4, which covers the transportation and storage industry. If you are new to the trade, what a freight forwarder actually does explains the desks behind these job titles.
Occupation (MOM name) | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
Customer service officer/clerk | 2,400 | 3,146 | 3,933 |
Shipping clerk | 2,677 | 3,300 | 4,037 |
Air transport clerk | 2,793 | 3,324 | 3,925 |
Logistics/Production planner | 2,894 | 3,528 | 4,613 |
Shipping agent/Boarding officer | 2,861 | 3,645 | 5,350 |
Air cargo officer | 3,290 | 4,028 | 5,060 |
Clearing/Forwarding agent | 3,657 | 4,259 | 5,060 |
Business development executive | 4,273 | 5,339 | 7,068 |
Supply and distribution/Logistics/Warehousing manager | 4,962 | 6,967 | 9,915 |
Sales manager | 5,938 | 7,520 | 10,840 |
Port/Shipping operations manager | 7,910 | 10,468 | 15,646 |
Read the median as "half earned less, half earned more". The 25th and 75th percentiles mark out the middle half of people in that occupation. So in MOM's figures, a shipping clerk on S$3,000 gross sits inside the middle half, and one on S$2,500 sits in the bottom quarter.
For the route into the job, including licences and tests, see how to become a freight forwarder in Singapore or Malaysia. This page stays on pay.
What do entry-level freight forwarding jobs pay?
MOM does not publish a "fresh graduate" column, but its Table 3 breaks pay down by age. The youngest band it shows, 25 to 29, is the closest public marker for people early in the trade. These figures cover all industries, not only transport.
Occupation (MOM name) | Median basic | Median gross |
Shipping clerk | 3,000 | 3,100 |
Customer service officer/clerk | 3,000 | 3,087 |
Logistics/Production planner | 3,800 | 3,920 |
Clearing/Forwarding agent | 3,945 | 3,984 |
Two cautions, both from MOM's coverage note. Apprentices, trainees and temporary workers are left out, so an internship allowance has no comparison here. And someone aged 25 to 29 may already have several years in the job, so a first offer can fairly sit below these medians.
Basic or gross: which number should you compare?
Compare like with like. MOM's methodology note defines basic wage as pay before employee CPF and tax, without bonuses, overtime, commissions or allowances. Gross wage adds overtime, commissions, allowances and other regular cash payments, but still leaves out employer CPF and bonuses. Commission-paid employees are left out of the basic-wage figures altogether.
So if an offer letter says "S$2,800 basic plus S$300 transport allowance", check S$2,800 against the basic column and S$3,100 against the gross column. In MOM's transport-industry figures, a customer service officer/clerk on S$2,800 basic sits between the 25th percentile (S$2,337) and the median (S$3,040). Where commission is part of the pay, gross will sit further above basic, because commission counts in gross and not in basic.
How to check a salary offer against MOM's figures
The checker follows five rules, in order. It stops at the first one that applies.
If the job is not full-time, stop: the survey covers full-time employees only.
If the figure is not monthly, stop: convert an annual or hourly number into a monthly salary first.
If the figure includes a bonus, stop: neither basic nor gross includes bonuses.
Pick the column: basic pay against basic; basic plus fixed allowances, overtime or commission against gross.
Find the occupation's row. If MOM has no row for it, stop. Otherwise, place the offer in one of seven positions: below the 25th percentile, exactly on it, between it and the median, exactly on the median, between the median and the 75th percentile, exactly on it, or above it.
We tested those rules on 12 constructed offers, labelled as test cases and not real offers, using the MOM figures in Tables 4 and 4.4. Four sit exactly on a boundary or one dollar past it. Four are cases the checker must refuse.
Case | Occupation and table | Offer | Compared with | Result |
1 | Clearing/Forwarding agent, 4.4 | 4,135 basic | Basic median 4,135 | At the median |
2 | Shipping clerk, 4.4 | 2,567 basic | Basic 25th percentile 2,567 | At the 25th percentile |
3 | Shipping clerk, 4.4 | 4,037 basic plus allowances | Gross 75th percentile 4,037 | At the 75th percentile |
4 | Customer service officer/clerk, 4.4 | 2,800 basic | Basic 2,337 / 3,040 / 3,774 | Between 25th percentile and median |
5 | Air cargo officer, 4.4 | 3,000 basic | Basic 25th percentile 3,152 | Below the 25th percentile |
6 | Sales manager, 4.4 | 11,000 basic plus commission | Gross 75th percentile 10,840 | Above the 75th percentile |
7 | Business development executive, 4 (all industries) | 5,000 basic | Basic 3,542 / 4,920 / 6,428 | Between median and 75th percentile |
8 | Logistics/Production planner, 4.4 | 3,361 basic | Basic median 3,360 | Between median and 75th percentile |
9 | "Freight pricing executive" | 3,500 basic | No MOM row | Refused: occupation not in table |
10 | Shipping clerk, part-time | 1,800 basic | Not covered | Refused: part-time |
11 | Clearing/Forwarding agent | 4,800 including bonus | Not covered | Refused: includes a bonus |
12 | Clearing/Forwarding agent | 54,000 a year | Not covered | Refused: annual figure |
Case 8 is there on purpose. An offer one dollar above the median is above it, not "at" it, and the checker has to say so. Case 9 matters just as much. Some forwarding job titles, such as pricing executive, have no row of their own, so pick the closest MOM occupation by its duties, not its title.
When the check does not work
The refusals matter as much as the answers. A part-time job, an internship allowance, a package quoted per year or a figure that already includes a bonus can't be placed in these bands without misleading you. Ask the employer for the monthly basic salary and a list of fixed allowances, then run the check again. If the job has no matching occupation, compare it with two neighbouring occupations rather than forcing one.
What a salary means for take-home pay
An offer is normally quoted before your own CPF contribution is taken off. CPF Board's rate table from 1 January 2026 covers Singaporeans, and permanent residents from their third year; other tables apply to permanent residents in their first two years. Under that table, for monthly wages above S$750, an employee aged 55 or below pays 20% of wages and the employer adds 17%. So on an S$3,000 salary, about S$600 goes to your CPF account before the rest reaches your bank.
Which role should you start in?
Start where the work teaches you the shipment end to end, and judge pay over several years, not on day one. In MOM's transport-industry figures, the clerical and officer occupations in the first table have medians of S$3,146 to S$4,028 gross, while sales managers reach a median of S$7,520 and port and shipping operations managers S$10,468.
Verdict: for most people, an operations or documentation desk is the better first seat. That desk handles the booking, the bill of lading, the customs paperwork and the carrier's cut-offs: the work a forwarding salesperson later sells. That is an editorial judgement, not something these figures prove.
What to do this week:
Write down the occupation that best matches the job's duties, not its title.
Find that row in MOM's Table 4.4, and in Table 3 if you are aged 25 to 29.
Ask the employer to split the offer into basic pay, fixed allowances and any commission or bonus.
Check basic against basic and the regular total against gross, using the five rules above.
If you have no experience, read freight forwarding courses in Singapore compared before paying for any training. A course is optional, not a licence.
If you want the basics before your first interview, a roadmap for learning international shipping covers the six fundamentals in plain English.
Frequently asked questions about freight forwarder pay
Which forwarding-related occupation pays the most?
Among the occupations in this page's table, port and shipping operations managers had the highest median, S$10,468 gross a month, with the 75th percentile at S$15,646, according to MOM's Table 4.4 for June 2025. That pay comes with running operations, not with a desk job.
Does a certificate raise a freight forwarder's salary?
MOM's tables are organised by occupation, industry and age, not by qualification, so they can't answer that. A course is a career credential, not a licence to work in forwarding. Freight forwarding courses in Singapore compared sets out the options and their entry rules.
Does working in transport pay more than the same job elsewhere?
Not always. According to MOM's Table 4 for all industries, a business development executive's median basic pay was S$4,920, against S$5,044 in transportation and storage. A clearing and forwarding agent's median gross was S$4,300 across all industries, against S$4,259 in transport. Check the table that matches your employer's industry.
What is the lowest pay in these forwarding-related occupations?
Among the occupations in this page's first table, customer service officers and clerks had the lowest 25th percentile, S$2,400 gross a month in transportation and storage, according to MOM's Table 4.4 for June 2025. A quarter of people in that occupation earned less than that.
Can I use these figures for a job in Malaysia or Indonesia?
No. MOM's survey covers employees of private establishments in Singapore only, so it says nothing about pay in Johor, Batam or Jakarta. Use each country's own official wage statistics for jobs there.
How up to date are these figures?
They describe pay in June 2025. According to MOM's methodology note, the survey ran from July to December 2025. Treat the figures as the official baseline, and expect current offers to have moved since.
Method
An AI research agent working for IFG Shipping built and tested the checker. It wrote the plan down first and fixed it with a dated SHA256 copy before any test ran. It downloaded MOM's Occupational Wage Survey 2025 Tables 3, 4 and 4.4 and the coverage note from the MOM statistics page on 5 October 2026, and copied the rows for 14 occupations, at basic and gross 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile.
The 12 test offers were constructed for the test and labelled as such. The agent worked out their expected answers before the script ran. A second, separate AI agent was given only the case inputs, the table rows and the written rules, and worked every answer blind. The script, the expected answers and the blind check agreed on 12 of 12 cases.
Limits
The checker tests rule logic, not real offers. MOM's figures describe pay received in June 2025 by full-time resident employees in private establishments with 25 or more staff, so smaller firms, foreign employees and later market moves are outside them. MOM assigns occupation codes to people, not to job titles, so your job may fit two rows or none. The same agent wrote the rules, the expected answers and the script, which is why the blind second check matters. Nothing here tells you what a particular employer will offer you.
Cite this
IFG Shipping. "Freight Forwarder Salary Singapore: MOM 2025 Pay Bands". Checker built and tested 5 October 2026; published 11 October 2026. Test-case dataset version 1: 12 constructed cases, labelled as tests and not real offers, published as a CSV with this page. Wage figures: Ministry of Manpower, Occupational Wage Survey 2025, Tables 3, 4 and 4.4.
Learn the trade with Iman, or hand a shipment to IFG
If you are deciding whether forwarding is for you, learn the trade with Iman. Read the guides on this site, follow his lessons on LinkedIn and on TikTok at @freightsifu, or ask him directly on WhatsApp at +60 14 325 8325 or through the contact page. It costs nothing, and there is no course, certificate or cohort to buy. Iman Yusoff's background sets out his career: in shipping since 1999, founder of IOL Shipping and IndoBox Asia, and of IFG Shipping in 2021.
If you run a business and have cargo to move, IFG is a freight forwarder. Contact IFG with your product, route and timing, and IFG will reply on the route and the documents it needs. IFG is not a recruiter and does not place job seekers.
Disclaimer: this is general information about official wage statistics, not career, financial or legal advice. MOM and CPF figures change, and were checked on 5 October 2026 against the Ministry of Manpower and CPF Board. Confirm current figures with those sources and the pay offered with the employer before you accept a job.
Content production support: SingRank, an SEO and AI search (GEO) agency in Singapore.
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