Minimum Wages

WageIndicator web pages provide information about Minimum Wages for 216 countries. Information is available for more than 22,000 Minimum Wages, of which more than half are in India.

In most countries Minimum Wages are updated regularly and most do so once a year. Other countries update according to the country’s inflation rate, as is shown in the WageIndicator news messages.

The WageIndicator team archives the updates in its Minimum Wage Database. This database contains time series data starting from January 2014, with 12 data points per year for each of the more than 22,000 different Minimum Wage rates. By July 1, 2026, the database contained almost 4.5 million data points. Hourly and weekly rates are converted to monthly rates. A codebook is freely downloadable.

Minimum wage levels vary largely across countries. In the current decade the lowest minimum reference wage is around 0.02 USD per hour in Burundi, whereas the highest rate is almost 20 USD in Switzerland, hence a thousand times higher.

Worldwide Minimum Wages are regulated by law. These Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW) rates are specified by the issuing authorities, be it the national government or any institution entitled to issue such rates, such as Ministries of Labour, Wage Boards, regional authorities, or municipalities.

WageIndicator provides Minimum Wage updates through checking the relevant websites of Ministries of Labour and Wage Boards worldwide. WageIndicator gratefully receives their notifications as well as alerts from team members and web visitors.