Topic: Minimum wage: who sets it, how often, and who it covers
What does China require?
Everyday topic
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.
What is this topic?
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.
Sources and dates
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