Working Days Calculator Singapore

How to use this calculator

1. Paste the gazetted dates inGet them from the Ministry of Manpower list for the year in question. Without them the count is understated by up to six days.
2. Check the inclusive box for a deadlineA deadline usually counts the final day. Leaving it unticked counts the gap instead, which is one short.
3. Use the Saturday option where it appliesPlenty of Singapore operations run a half or full Saturday. A five-day count understates capacity badly in those sectors.
4. Remember Sunday holidays shiftA gazetted holiday falling on a Sunday gives the following Monday off in lieu, and the calculator applies that.

Why six of the eleven cannot be computed

Singapore gazettes **eleven public holidays**, and a working-days calculator has to be honest about the fact that only five of them can be derived.

**The five that can.** New Year's Day on 1 January, Labour Day on 1 May, National Day on 9 August and Christmas Day on 25 December all sit on fixed dates. Good Friday moves, but it follows Easter, which is computable — the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox — so it is calculated here for any year rather than looked up.

**The six that cannot.** Chinese New Year runs over two days and follows the lunisolar calendar. Vesak Day follows the lunar calendar. Hari Raya Puasa and Hari Raya Haji follow the Islamic calendar, which is lunar and observationally determined. Deepavali follows the Hindu calendar.

Their civil dates are **gazetted annually by the Ministry of Manpower**, and they are the authoritative source. Converting between those calendars and the Gregorian one is not something a small calculator should attempt, and the observational element in the Islamic dates means even a good conversion can be a day out.

So this calculator asks rather than guesses.

**That is a deliberate design choice and it is the differentiator.** A calculator that hard-codes those dates is correct for one year and quietly wrong afterwards — and quietly is the problem. A missing holiday shows up as a count that seems one too high; a wrong holiday shows up as nothing at all until someone misses a deadline.

The mix of calendars is not an inconvenience to be engineered around. Singapore gazettes holidays across four religious traditions, which is precisely why the list cannot be reduced to an algorithm the way a single-tradition calendar can.

**Where a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday is a day off in lieu**, and the calculator applies that automatically to both the computed and the entered dates. A holiday falling on a Saturday is treated differently and depends on the employment arrangement, so check the contract rather than assuming.

One separate point. Whether a day is gazetted is a different question from what an individual is entitled to. Under the Employment Act an employee is paid for a gazetted public holiday, and working one attracts an extra day's salary or a day off in lieu by agreement. That is an employment question and MOM sets out the detail.

Worked example: April 2026

Take 1 April 2026 to 30 April 2026, inclusive, with no moveable holidays entered.

April 2026 has **30 calendar days**, of which 8 fall at a weekend.

Easter Sunday 2026 is 5 April, so **Good Friday is 3 April** — a computed holiday falling on a weekday inside the range.

That gives **21 working days**, or 168 hours at 8 hours a day.

April happens to contain no moveable holidays in most years, which makes it a clean example. Other months are not so simple.

Now a month where the gazetted dates matter. Take February in a year where Chinese New Year falls mid-month over two days. Without those two dates entered, a 20-working-day February reads as 20. With them, it reads as 18 — a **10% difference in capacity** that no amount of careful weekend arithmetic will find.

That is the case this tool is built for, and it is why the note under the result says so explicitly rather than presenting an understated figure as complete.

Now the inclusive setting. From 1 June 2026 to 5 June 2026 gives **5 working days** including the end date and **4** excluding it. A fifth of the answer, decided by a checkbox.

And the Saturday option. The same April range with Saturday counted as a working day gives **25 working days** rather than 21 — four more, because only Sundays and Good Friday come out.

For an annual figure: 2026 has 365 calendar days, of which 104 fall at a weekend, leaving 261 weekdays. Deduct the gazetted holidays falling on working days and the year's working-day total follows. That annual number is what a day rate should be built on, and it is always lower than the 260 people assume from “52 weeks × 5”.

Every figure above comes from the calculator.

Singapore's eleven gazetted holidays

Ten rows for eleven days, because Chinese New Year covers two. The middle column is the honest part: six of the eleven follow calendars that cannot be converted reliably from a civil date, so they are inputs rather than assumptions. Take them from the Ministry of Manpower list for the year you are counting.

Where the working-day count matters

**Contractual and statutory deadlines.** Anything expressed in working days needs this count rather than a calendar one, and the gap is large — thirty working days is six weeks, not a month. Check which the contract means before counting either.

**Payroll and day rates.** Converting an annual salary to a day rate depends on the working days in the year, and using 260 as a round figure overstates it. A day rate built on 260 is quietly understated.

**Project scheduling.** A plan on calendar days is optimistic by roughly 30%, and one on weekdays without holidays is optimistic by up to eleven more days a year. Neither error shows in a week; both matter across a project.

**Regional coordination.** This is where the moveable holidays bite hardest. A team split across Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong shares some festivals and not others, and the gazetted dates differ between jurisdictions even for the same festival. Scheduling from one country's list produces a plan that assumes people are available when they are not.

**Leave planning.** Long weekends cluster around gazetted holidays, and the ones that fall adjacent to a weekend are the ones everybody books leave around. Knowing them early is worth more than the arithmetic.

A few notes on the edges of what this counts.

**Company shutdowns are not gazetted holidays.** Many firms close over year-end or around Chinese New Year, and those days are not deducted here because they are not statutory.

**Eve-of-holiday early releases** — common on Chinese New Year's eve and Christmas Eve — are an employer practice, not a holiday, and are not counted.

**Sector and union agreements** can add days that apply only in particular industries. Add them to the gazetted list manually if they apply to you.

And the standing caution: **if the moveable dates are not entered, the answer is understated.** The calculator says so under every result rather than presenting an incomplete count as a finished one.

Assumptions and limitations

• Only five of the eleven gazetted holidays are computed
• The six moveable holidays must be supplied — they are not guessed
• Without them the working-day count is understated
• Company shutdowns and eve-of-holiday releases are not deducted
• Assumes a Monday to Friday week unless the Saturday option is set
• A Sunday holiday gives a Monday in lieu; a Saturday holiday depends on the contract
• Public holiday entitlement is a separate employment question

Questions people ask about this in Singapore