India minimum wage
National statutory minimum wage. India has no single national minimum wage; wages are set as a matrix of central-sphere and state rates per employment, skill level and area. Served as a structural null with the mechanism documented.
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2025-11-21 |
| Official source | Code on Wages, 2019 (Act No. 29 of 2019), brought into force w.e.f. 21 November 2025 by four Gazette of India notifications of 21-11-2025; cited via EY India alert 'New labour codes implemented across the country effective 21 November 2025' (triangulated fallback — labour.gov.in, PIB and India Code were unreachable from our fetch environment) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-20 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
STRUCTURAL NULL: India has no single national statutory minimum wage. Minimum wages are fixed by the 'appropriate government' — the Centre for the central sphere and each of 28 states / 8 union territories for their own spheres — differentiated by employment category, skill level (unskilled/semi-skilled/skilled/highly skilled) and geographic area, yielding a matrix of well over 1,500 distinct statutory rates; serving any one state's lowest rate would be arbitrary. The Code on Wages, 2019 (in force 2025-11-21, replacing the Minimum Wages Act, 1948) universalised minimum-wage coverage to all employments and empowers the Central Government under s.9 to fix a BINDING national floor wage below which no appropriate government may set rates — as of 2026-07-20 no s.9 floor wage has been notified (the fixing exercise reportedly began July 2026 per press reports; final Central Rules under the Codes were still being notified, draft Central Rules issued 2025-12-30). The pre-Code National Floor Level Minimum Wage of INR 178/day (2019) is advisory and non-binding. Central-sphere rates are revised via Variable Dearness Allowance orders of the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) each April and October (clc.gov.in). Access notes: labour.gov.in returns 403, clc.gov.in and dopt.gov.in reset connections, indiacode.nic.in returns 403 from our fetch environment — in-force date triangulated via EY alert (loaded, cites the four 21-11-2025 gazette notifications and PIB PRID 2192463) and Big-4/officially-syndicated coverage. When a s.9 floor wage is notified this series flips from null to that statutory floor.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/in/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/in/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/in/minimum-wageOther India series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates