What Jobs Actually Pay in the Cayman Islands
Every live ad on the government’s work-permit job board, collected daily and turned into medians by occupation, education, experience and employer. Advertised pay for permit-route roles, in CI$, from the board’s own salary ranges.
The Cayman Salary Index tracks what jobs in the Cayman Islands actually pay, from every live advertisement on the government’s WORC JobsCayman board. Since 1 November 2025 employers must advertise there, with a stated salary range, for 14 days before applying for a work permit, which makes the board a daily census of advertised pay for permit-route roles. As of 2026-09-21 the board carries 1,305 live ads from about 768 employers. The median advertised salary is CI$28,080 a year across the 1,236 full-time ads with usable salary ranges; half of all ads fall between CI$20,876 and CI$46,451, and the top tenth start above CI$86,792.
Advertised pay splits sharply by currency: the 203 ads priced in US dollars have a median of CI$70,833 a year (converted at the fixed CI$1 = US$1.20 peg), against CI$25,740 for the 1033 ads priced in Cayman dollars. 435 ads, about 35%, price at a legal minimum-wage rate: 362 at the standard CI$8.75 an hour, 72 in the CI$6.56 gratuity and live-in class, and 1 ad below both floors. Of the 959 ads live for ten days or more, 572, about 60%, have no local applicants through the portal. By occupation group, median advertised pay: Managers CI$76,705; Professionals CI$66,334; Technicians & associate professionals CI$38,000; Craft & trades CI$30,420; Clerical support CI$24,500; Plant & machine operators CI$23,400; Elementary occupations CI$21,353; Service & sales CI$20,768; Agriculture & fishery CI$20,768. The most advertised occupations are construction labourers (74 ads, median CI$28,925), carpenters and joiners (67 ads, median CI$30,888), accountants (56 ads, median CI$85,001); the biggest advertisers are EY, Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort, Morritts Tortuga, KPMG.
Method: the board is collected every morning at 06:10 Cayman time. Salary figures are the midpoint of each ad’s advertised range, annualised in Cayman dollars, with USD converted at the fixed peg. Medians are of ads, not positions. Occupations use WORC’s own ISCO-08 codes, the same classification the Economics and Statistics Office uses. Ads that are not full-time, have implausible or contradictory salary data, or carry no occupation code are excluded from headline statistics and listed on the data quality page. Employers are shown by trading name; sole traders whose legal name is a personal name are aggregated but never listed individually. This measures advertised pay for roles being filled through the work-permit route, not all pay in Cayman: public-sector roles and many Caymanian hires never appear on the board. Local applications are counted through the JobsCayman portal itself, the channel WORC sees when assessing the subsequent work-permit application, so they are the officially visible measure of local interest even though employers may also advertise elsewhere. Occupation-level aggregates are published as CSV at salary-index-latest.csv and salary-index-series.csv; excluded ads are listed on the data quality page.
Frequently Asked Questions: Cayman Islands
Is the Cayman Salary Index every job in Cayman?
No. It covers every live advertisement on the government’s WORC JobsCayman board, where employers must advertise with a salary range for 14 days before applying for a work permit. That makes it a complete daily census of advertised pay for permit-route roles, but public-sector jobs and many roles filled by Caymanians without a permit application never appear on the board.
Why is the median advertised salary lower than I expected?
The board skews toward the roles employers most often fill through work permits: construction, hospitality, domestic and service work. High-paying professional roles are on the board too, but they are outnumbered. That is also why the USD-priced segment, mostly finance and professional services, shows a median nearly three times the KYD segment’s.
What does ‘local applicants per ad’ mean?
The number of applications made through the JobsCayman portal itself, averaged over ads that have been live at least 10 days. Only registered local jobseekers apply through the portal, so it is a proxy for local interest in a role, not total applications an employer receives by other channels. Portal applications are also what WORC sees when assessing the subsequent work-permit application, which makes this the officially visible measure of local interest even though employers may also advertise and receive applications elsewhere.
Why are some employers not named in the Cayman Salary Index?
Employers are shown by their trading name. Where the legal advertiser is an individual person, a sole trader advertising under their own name, the ads are counted in every statistic but the name is never displayed. Employer rankings also require at least five live ads.
How are US dollar salaries converted in the Cayman Salary Index?
At the fixed peg of CI$1 = US$1.20, so a US$60,000 salary counts as CI$50,000. About one ad in seven is priced in USD, mostly in finance and professional services. The conversion rate is stated in the methodology and never floats.