01 · Wages

Wages step by law, then freeze

Advertised pay jumped with the 2023 minimum-wage era and has been flat since; real wages have fallen with inflation.

2019 MVR 8,499

2020 MVR 8,499

2021 MVR 8,499

2022 MVR 8,499

2023 MVR 10,000

2024 MVR 10,999

2025 MVR 10,999

2026 MVR 10,999

disclosed pay only · compliance ads excluded

02 · Pay

Highest-paying roles

Finance Manager MVR 25,000 n=47

Doctor MVR 18,000 n=154

Manager (Other) MVR 17,999 n=519

Architect MVR 17,999 n=51

Quantity Surveyor MVR 17,999 n=54

Teacher MVR 17,500 n=296

Legal Officer MVR 17,300 n=90

Spa Therapist MVR 15,015 n=51

It Staff MVR 13,999 n=200

Senior Management MVR 13,999 n=178

Boat Captain MVR 13,999 n=478

Supervisor (Other) MVR 13,500 n=265

03 · Demand

Most-hired roles, last 12 months

waiter 1,438 positions

admin staff 1,145 positions

sales staff 1,117 positions

hr staff 903 positions

marketing staff 823 positions

receptionist/gsa 816 positions

accountant/accounts staff 771 positions

technician/engineer (other) 731 positions

room attendant 635 positions

butler/host 623 positions

manager (other) 527 positions

commis 512 positions

04 · Skills

The language premium

Resort ads that name a required language (LLM-extracted, 2024–2026). Chinese and Russian dominate: the highest-ROI skills for the international resort pool.

chinese 1,902 ads

russian 1,265 ads

japanese 358 ads

german 335 ads

thai 312 ads

italian 293 ads

arabic 274 ads

korean 139 ads

source: enriched resort ads · english excluded as baseline

05 · Access

The closing entry-level door

Share of Malé private-sector postings open to candidates with no experience.

2019 5.7%

2020 5.1%

2021 4.6%

2022 4.5%

2023 4.1%

2024 2.6%

2025 2.4%

2026 4.3%

Methodology

Based on 150,165 positions collected from the major Maldivian job platforms (2007–present), refreshed daily. Salary figures use only postings that disclose pay; quota-compliance ads are excluded from all wage statistics; multi-role ads are split into individual positions. Statistics below our sample-size floor are withheld, not estimated. Resort salaries are structurally under-disclosed (~4% of ads); where that limits an answer, we say so.