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=38

Quantity Surveyor MVR 20,000 n=49

Architect MVR 17,999 n=51

Manager (Other) MVR 17,999 n=506

Doctor MVR 17,999 n=145

Teacher MVR 17,999 n=246

Legal Officer MVR 17,999 n=73

Spa Therapist MVR 15,015 n=47

Senior Management MVR 13,999 n=172

Boat Captain MVR 13,999 n=470

It Staff MVR 13,999 n=189

Supervisor (Other) MVR 13,500 n=257

03 · Demand

Most-hired roles, last 12 months

waiter 1,421 positions

sales staff 1,112 positions

admin staff 1,059 positions

hr staff 885 positions

marketing staff 829 positions

receptionist/gsa 807 positions

accountant/accounts staff 766 positions

technician/engineer (other) 720 positions

room attendant 623 positions

butler/host 583 positions

manager (other) 517 positions

commis 517 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 1,890 ads

russian 1,272 ads

german 363 ads

japanese 356 ads

arabic 333 ads

thai 306 ads

italian 301 ads

french 177 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 146,937 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.