Question 1

What is this topic?

Accepted Answer

Taiwan's Minimum Wage Act (enacted 2023) is decided each year by a 21-member Minimum Wage Review Council that meets in the third quarter; the rate for 2026 is NT$29,500 a month or NT$196 an hour, a single national figure with no regional variation. Japan runs 47 separate rates instead: local minimum wage councils in each prefecture set their own number after the central council issues a nationwide guideline — the 2026 guideline points to a weighted average of ¥1,176 an hour, but the actual figure differs prefecture by prefecture. China's Regulation on Minimum Wages requires provincial governments to review their rates at least every two years, and a single province can still run two to four tiers — Shaanxi's 2026 notice sets ¥2,376 a month in its top tier and ¥2,140 in its lowest. The US federal minimum has sat at $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009 — seventeen years unchanged — while states are free to set higher floors (Washington, D.C. runs $18.40) or simply default to the federal rate. India's Code on Wages, 2019 only became fully operative on April 1, 2026, extending statutory minimum-wage coverage from the roughly 30% of workers under "scheduled employment" to nearly everyone — but the binding national floor wage it authorizes was still under consultation as of August 2026, with the only reference point being a non-binding ₹176-a-day benchmark unchanged since 2017. Indonesia's 2025 regulation lets each of its 34 provincial governors set an annual UMP tied to local economic growth; Jakarta's 2026 figure, the country's highest, is Rp5,729,876 a month. Brazil sets one national number by presidential decree, adjusted each year for the prior year's INPC inflation plus GDP growth two years back — R$1,621 a month from January 2026 — though a handful of states such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul are allowed under a 2000 law to set their own regional floor above it.

Question 2

When is it?

Accepted Answer

There is no single verified fixed date here; timing varies by place, household, or personal choice.

Question 3

How do places mark it?

Accepted Answer

United States; Brazil; China; Indonesia; India; Japan; Taiwan

Question 4

What differs by place?

Accepted Answer

Brazil: Brazil's Constitution, Article 7(IV), lists a nationally uniform minimum wage as a basic worker right — one large enough to meet a worker's and family's basic needs for housing, food, education, health, leisure, clothing, hygiene, transport, and social security — and requires it to be “periodically adjusted to preserve its purchasing power.” In practice, the Minimum Wage Valuation Policy Law (Law No. 14,663, passed by Congress in August 2023) writes the adjustment formula into statute: each year's raise equals the prior year's cumulative INPC consumer-price inflation plus the real GDP growth rate from two years earlier. The president signs a decree at the end of each year to formally announce the figure, effective January 1 the following year — a single national number, with no regional variation. Decree No. 12,797, signed by President Lula on December 23, 2025 and published in the Official Gazette (DOU) on December 24, 2025, sets the minimum wage from January 1, 2026 at R$1,621 a month — R$54.04 a day, R$7.37 an hour. But under Complementary Law No. 103 of 2000, some more economically developed states (such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul) may set their own regional minimum wage (piso salarial regional), which by law can only be set higher than the national figure, never lower. So Brazil's minimum wage is nationally uniform on the surface, but the system itself deliberately lets its more developed states opt into a higher floor. China: China's minimum wage is governed by the Regulation on Minimum Wages issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: each provincial, autonomous-region, or municipal government's labor department drafts the figure together with the same-level trade union federation and enterprise association, and it takes effect once the higher government approves it. The regulation requires a review at least once every two years. Factors to weigh include the minimum living costs of local workers and their dependents, the urban consumer price index, workers' individual contributions to social insurance and the housing fund, average wages, and the local level of economic development and employment. The system runs on two tracks: a monthly rate for full-time employees and an hourly rate for part-time ones. Within a single province the rate is usually further split into two to four tiers by how developed each city is. For the standard effective in 2026: Shanghai runs a single province-wide figure of ¥2,740, the country's highest; Shaanxi splits into three tiers — ¥2,376, ¥2,250, and ¥2,140 a month, with corresponding hourly part-time rates of ¥23, ¥21.7, and ¥20.7; Jiangsu's three tiers run from ¥2,660 down to ¥2,180. There is no single national figure — there often isn't even a single figure within one province. Indonesia: Indonesia runs its minimum wage on two layers: the provincial UMP (Upah Minimum Provinsi) and the district/city UMK (Upah Minimum Kabupaten/Kota), which can only be set higher than the UMP, never lower. Under Government Regulation 36/2021 (as amended by Regulation 51/2023) and Regulation 49/2025, each province's Regional Wage Council — made up of labor representatives, employer representatives, government officials, and academics — proposes a figure; the governor must announce the UMP by November 21 at the latest, and district/city heads must announce the UMK by November 30. Starting in 2026, the central government stopped setting one uniform national percentage increase; instead each province works out its own actual figure, within a range the center provides, based on local economic growth, labor's contribution to the regional economy, and how far wages sit below the region's decent living needs (KHL) — formally acknowledging that the 34 provinces will not all get the same raise. The 2026 high is Jakarta's, set at Rp5,729,876 a month under Governor's Decision No. 1142/2025 (announced December 23, 2025), up 6.17% from 2025; West Sumatra, by contrast, went from Rp2,994,193 in 2025 to Rp3,182,955 in 2026. There is no single national figure, and even the percentage increase itself is not uniform across the country. India: India's minimum wage system is in the middle of a handover year. The older Minimum Wages Act, 1948 only protects workers in “scheduled employment” — roughly 30% of the workforce. Section 3 requires the “appropriate government” (the central government for railways, mines, oilfields, major ports, and central corporations; state governments for everything else) to fix a minimum wage for each scheduled employment and review it at intervals not exceeding five years, and a single state can further split its rates by skill level (unskilled/semi-skilled/skilled) and by zone. The Code on Wages, 2019 extends the statutory right to a minimum wage to all employees, not just scheduled ones, and Section 9 empowers the central government to fix a binding floor wage that no state's or the center's own minimum wage may fall below. The Code's rules were only notified on November 21, 2025, and it — together with three companion labour codes — became fully operative on April 1, 2026. But as of August 2026, the central government had only just begun consulting states and forming a Central Advisory Board to recompute the consumption basket needed to set the first binding floor wage; until then, the only reference point is a non-binding National Floor Level Minimum Wage of ₹176 a day, unchanged since 2017. In other words, India now has a new, universal principle on paper, and an open question — what the floor wage actually is — that has not yet been answered. Japan: Japan runs two kinds of minimum wage — a regional (地域別) rate that is the main one, and an industry-specific (特定) rate — both under the Minimum Wage Act. The process has two stages: the Central Minimum Wage Council first groups the 47 prefectures into ranks by economic conditions and issues a nationwide adjustment guideline (目安) for each rank; each prefecture's own local minimum wage council then decides the actual figure, weighing local workers' cost of living, general wage levels, and employers' ability to pay. For fiscal 2026, the central council's guideline, issued July 28, points to a national weighted average of ¥1,176 an hour (up ¥55, or 4.9%, from the year before), but each prefecture's local council still has to issue its own decision, so the actual amount — and the effective date, mostly in October — varies by prefecture. That means Japan does not have one national rate; it has 47 coexisting ones. An employer who underpays the regional rate can be fined up to ¥500,000; underpaying the industry-specific rate carries a lower cap of ¥300,000. Taiwan: Taiwan's minimum wage is governed by the Minimum Wage Act, enacted December 27, 2023, which replaced the older administrative-order-level Regulations Governing the Review of the Basic Wage. The Minimum Wage Review Council has 21 members: the Minister of Labor as convener, one representative each from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the National Development Council, seven labor representatives, seven employer representatives, and four scholars and experts, with no gender making up less than a third of the seats. The Council meets in principle in the third quarter each year; once it approves a rate, the Ministry of Labor must report it to the Executive Yuan for approval within ten days, and the rate takes effect on January 1 of the following year unless the Council sets and gets approval for a different date. The rate effective in 2026 is NT$29,500 a month or NT$196 an hour, up 3.18% from the year before and the tenth consecutive annual increase. It is a single national figure with no regional or industry variation; the hourly rate mainly applies to part-time and other non-full-time workers. United States: The United States has no single national body that reviews and sets one minimum wage. The federal minimum wage, set under the Fair Labor Standards Act, is $7.25 an hour, unchanged since it took effect on July 24, 2009 — the longest freeze in the law's history since it was enacted in 1938; raising it requires an act of Congress, not an administrative decision. States (and some cities and counties) may set a minimum wage higher than the federal rate but not lower; where a state has not set its own rate, the federal $7.25 applies by default. States differ widely in method: some index their rate to inflation and adjust it automatically every year, others need a new law or a ballot measure each time. For 2026, Washington, D.C. has the highest rate at $18.40 an hour; Georgia and Wyoming have statutory rates of only $5.15, but because most employees there are still covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the effective floor remains $7.25. The rule is that an employer must pay whichever minimum wage — federal, state, or local — is highest for where the employee actually works.

Question 5

What does Brazil require?

Accepted Answer

Brazil's Constitution, Article 7(IV), lists a nationally uniform minimum wage as a basic worker right — one large enough to meet a worker's and family's basic needs for housing, food, education, health, leisure, clothing, hygiene, transport, and social security — and requires it to be “periodically adjusted to preserve its purchasing power.” In practice, the Minimum Wage Valuation Policy Law (Law No. 14,663, passed by Congress in August 2023) writes the adjustment formula into statute: each year's raise equals the prior year's cumulative INPC consumer-price inflation plus the real GDP growth rate from two years earlier. The president signs a decree at the end of each year to formally announce the figure, effective January 1 the following year — a single national number, with no regional variation. Decree No. 12,797, signed by President Lula on December 23, 2025 and published in the Official Gazette (DOU) on December 24, 2025, sets the minimum wage from January 1, 2026 at R$1,621 a month — R$54.04 a day, R$7.37 an hour. But under Complementary Law No. 103 of 2000, some more economically developed states (such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul) may set their own regional minimum wage (piso salarial regional), which by law can only be set higher than the national figure, never lower. So Brazil's minimum wage is nationally uniform on the surface, but the system itself deliberately lets its more developed states opt into a higher floor.

Question 6

What does China require?

Accepted Answer

China's minimum wage is governed by the Regulation on Minimum Wages issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: each provincial, autonomous-region, or municipal government's labor department drafts the figure together with the same-level trade union federation and enterprise association, and it takes effect once the higher government approves it. The regulation requires a review at least once every two years. Factors to weigh include the minimum living costs of local workers and their dependents, the urban consumer price index, workers' individual contributions to social insurance and the housing fund, average wages, and the local level of economic development and employment. The system runs on two tracks: a monthly rate for full-time employees and an hourly rate for part-time ones. Within a single province the rate is usually further split into two to four tiers by how developed each city is. For the standard effective in 2026: Shanghai runs a single province-wide figure of ¥2,740, the country's highest; Shaanxi splits into three tiers — ¥2,376, ¥2,250, and ¥2,140 a month, with corresponding hourly part-time rates of ¥23, ¥21.7, and ¥20.7; Jiangsu's three tiers run from ¥2,660 down to ¥2,180. There is no single national figure — there often isn't even a single figure within one province.

Question 7

What does Indonesia require?

Accepted Answer

Indonesia runs its minimum wage on two layers: the provincial UMP (Upah Minimum Provinsi) and the district/city UMK (Upah Minimum Kabupaten/Kota), which can only be set higher than the UMP, never lower. Under Government Regulation 36/2021 (as amended by Regulation 51/2023) and Regulation 49/2025, each province's Regional Wage Council — made up of labor representatives, employer representatives, government officials, and academics — proposes a figure; the governor must announce the UMP by November 21 at the latest, and district/city heads must announce the UMK by November 30. Starting in 2026, the central government stopped setting one uniform national percentage increase; instead each province works out its own actual figure, within a range the center provides, based on local economic growth, labor's contribution to the regional economy, and how far wages sit below the region's decent living needs (KHL) — formally acknowledging that the 34 provinces will not all get the same raise. The 2026 high is Jakarta's, set at Rp5,729,876 a month under Governor's Decision No. 1142/2025 (announced December 23, 2025), up 6.17% from 2025; West Sumatra, by contrast, went from Rp2,994,193 in 2025 to Rp3,182,955 in 2026. There is no single national figure, and even the percentage increase itself is not uniform across the country.

Question 8

What does India require?

Accepted Answer

India's minimum wage system is in the middle of a handover year. The older Minimum Wages Act, 1948 only protects workers in “scheduled employment” — roughly 30% of the workforce. Section 3 requires the “appropriate government” (the central government for railways, mines, oilfields, major ports, and central corporations; state governments for everything else) to fix a minimum wage for each scheduled employment and review it at intervals not exceeding five years, and a single state can further split its rates by skill level (unskilled/semi-skilled/skilled) and by zone. The Code on Wages, 2019 extends the statutory right to a minimum wage to all employees, not just scheduled ones, and Section 9 empowers the central government to fix a binding floor wage that no state's or the center's own minimum wage may fall below. The Code's rules were only notified on November 21, 2025, and it — together with three companion labour codes — became fully operative on April 1, 2026. But as of August 2026, the central government had only just begun consulting states and forming a Central Advisory Board to recompute the consumption basket needed to set the first binding floor wage; until then, the only reference point is a non-binding National Floor Level Minimum Wage of ₹176 a day, unchanged since 2017. In other words, India now has a new, universal principle on paper, and an open question — what the floor wage actually is — that has not yet been answered.

Question 9

What does Japan require?

Accepted Answer

Japan runs two kinds of minimum wage — a regional (地域別) rate that is the main one, and an industry-specific (特定) rate — both under the Minimum Wage Act. The process has two stages: the Central Minimum Wage Council first groups the 47 prefectures into ranks by economic conditions and issues a nationwide adjustment guideline (目安) for each rank; each prefecture's own local minimum wage council then decides the actual figure, weighing local workers' cost of living, general wage levels, and employers' ability to pay. For fiscal 2026, the central council's guideline, issued July 28, points to a national weighted average of ¥1,176 an hour (up ¥55, or 4.9%, from the year before), but each prefecture's local council still has to issue its own decision, so the actual amount — and the effective date, mostly in October — varies by prefecture. That means Japan does not have one national rate; it has 47 coexisting ones. An employer who underpays the regional rate can be fined up to ¥500,000; underpaying the industry-specific rate carries a lower cap of ¥300,000.

Question 10

What does Taiwan require?

Accepted Answer

Taiwan's minimum wage is governed by the Minimum Wage Act, enacted December 27, 2023, which replaced the older administrative-order-level Regulations Governing the Review of the Basic Wage. The Minimum Wage Review Council has 21 members: the Minister of Labor as convener, one representative each from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the National Development Council, seven labor representatives, seven employer representatives, and four scholars and experts, with no gender making up less than a third of the seats. The Council meets in principle in the third quarter each year; once it approves a rate, the Ministry of Labor must report it to the Executive Yuan for approval within ten days, and the rate takes effect on January 1 of the following year unless the Council sets and gets approval for a different date. The rate effective in 2026 is NT$29,500 a month or NT$196 an hour, up 3.18% from the year before and the tenth consecutive annual increase. It is a single national figure with no regional or industry variation; the hourly rate mainly applies to part-time and other non-full-time workers.

Question 11

What does United States require?

Accepted Answer

The United States has no single national body that reviews and sets one minimum wage. The federal minimum wage, set under the Fair Labor Standards Act, is $7.25 an hour, unchanged since it took effect on July 24, 2009 — the longest freeze in the law's history since it was enacted in 1938; raising it requires an act of Congress, not an administrative decision. States (and some cities and counties) may set a minimum wage higher than the federal rate but not lower; where a state has not set its own rate, the federal $7.25 applies by default. States differ widely in method: some index their rate to inflation and adjust it automatically every year, others need a new law or a ballot measure each time. For 2026, Washington, D.C. has the highest rate at $18.40 an hour; Georgia and Wyoming have statutory rates of only $5.15, but because most employees there are still covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the effective floor remains $7.25. The rule is that an employer must pay whichever minimum wage — federal, state, or local — is highest for where the employee actually works.

Place	When is it?	How the date is set
United States	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic
Brazil	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic
China	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic
Indonesia	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic
India	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic
Japan	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic
Taiwan	Date to be confirmed	Everyday topic

Minimum wage: who sets it, how often, and who it covers

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