Topic: Minimum wage: who sets it, how often, and who it covers
What does United States require?
Everyday topic
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.
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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