🇧🇷What does Brazil require?

Everyday topic

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.