How to Find Minimum Wages by State in India

The central government’s wage order runs from ₹478 a day, for an unskilled farm worker in a Class C area, to ₹1,094, for an armed security guard in a Class A city.

Both come from the central government’s wage order of 1 April 2026. Neither is necessarily yours: those rates bind railways, mines, ports, banks and a short list of other employers. Everyone else reads a rate their own state sets.

This page shows you how to find the minimum wages by state rate that applies to your staff. It also shows you how to check that the one you already have is still live.

What Are the Current Rates?

Below are the rates the central government set from 1 April 2026, in full, from the Chief Labour Commissioner’s wage order. Each figure is a basic rate plus a living-cost allowance, added together.

Farm work, per day	Class A area	Class B area	Class C area
Unskilled	₹528	₹483	₹478
Semi-skilled	₹578	₹530	₹488
Skilled or clerical	₹627	₹578	₹529
Highly skilled	₹694	₹645	₹578

Other work, per day	Class A area	Class B area	Class C area
Sweeping and cleaning	₹827	₹693	₹556
Loading and unloading	₹827	₹693	₹556
Security, unarmed	₹1,008	₹918	₹781
Security, armed	₹1,094	₹1,008	₹918

Mining, per day	Above ground	Below ground
Unskilled	₹556	₹693
Semi-skilled	₹693	₹827
Skilled or clerical	₹827	₹964
Highly skilled	₹964	₹1,078

These rates moved because the consumer price index for industrial workers rose from 413.52 to 424.80 over 2025. They are revised twice a year, on 1 April and 1 October, so the next set lands on 1 October.

If your business is not on the central list, and most are not, the shape above is still what you are looking for: a job, a skill grade, an area, and a basic rate with an allowance on top.

Why Minimum Wages by State Differ

Because the Code on Wages never asks for a single national rate. It asks each government to fix its own, and tells them what to base it on.

Section 6(6)(a) of the Code on Wages, 2019 says a government fixing a rate shall primarily take into account the skill of workers required, or the geographical area, or both.

So the law itself builds in variation. A textile mill and a supermarket chain in the same state are not reading the same notification, and two branches of that supermarket in different zones may not be reading the same line of it.

The Code does set one boundary underneath all of it. Section 9 gives the Central Government a duty to fix a floor wage, and says minimum rates fixed by any government shall not be less than it. A state may sit above the floor. It may not go below.

Which Government Notifies You?

Either the Centre or your state, and section 2(d) of the Code decides which. It calls whichever applies to you the appropriate government, and getting this wrong means reading the wrong notification all year.

Your establishment is	You read
Railways, mines, an oil field or a major port	Central Government notifications
Air transport, telecommunication, banking or insurance	Central Government notifications
An establishment of the Central Government, a body set up by a Central Act, or an autonomous body the Centre owns or controls	Central Government notifications
A central public sector undertaking or its subsidiary	Central Government notifications
A contractor working for any establishment in the rows above	Central Government notifications
Anything else, which covers most businesses	Your State Government’s notifications

A hotel in Jaipur, an engineering workshop in Pune, a diagnostic lab chain in Hyderabad, a school, a supermarket and a coaching institute all sit in the last row, reading their own state. A contractor supplying staff to any of them reads the same one.

Our guide to the Code on Wages rules covers what the central rules themselves require and how the daily rate turns into a monthly one. This page picks up where that one stops, at your state’s own notification.

Which Four Things Set Your Rate?

Four, and you need all of them before a rupee figure means anything.

Which government notifies you is settled above. The three below come from the notification that government issues, read against what your own records say about each employee and each branch.

The Employment Category

The employment category is not in the Code at all. The old Minimum Wages Act carried a schedule of employments; the Code carries none, and the phrase “scheduled employment” does not appear in it.

States still notify in that shape, because the notifications saved by section 69(2) were written that way. Shops and establishments, hotels and restaurants, engineering, textiles, construction and private security are commonly listed on their own.

If you run a printing unit inside a hospital, ask your state labour department which category you fall under rather than guessing. The answer decides which notification covers the unit. The grade then decides each person’s rate inside it.

The Skill Grade

Section 6(6)(a) names four: unskilled, skilled, semi-skilled and highly-skilled. States define which roles sit in which grade, inside the notification itself.

This is where underpayment tends to start, and rarely on purpose. A welder in a Chennai fabrication unit whose record says unskilled gets paid the unskilled rate, which may sit below the grade their state puts welding in.

The record is what an inspector reads, and the wage and payroll register is where they read it.

Section 6(6)(b) lets a government take account of arduous work on top of the skill grade, such as heat, humidity, hazardous processes or underground work, in the way its own rules prescribe. Where your state has done that, the uplift sits in the same notification.

The Zone

Many states divide themselves into zones or areas, and notify a different rate for each. A metro corporation area, a municipal area and a rural area can be three different figures for identical work.

For a single-branch business this is a one-time lookup. For a pharmacy chain with thirty outlets it is thirty lookups, and the branch address on your records is what settles each one.

Zones are drawn by the state, not by distance. Two outlets twenty minutes apart can sit in different ones if a municipal boundary runs between them, and neither the pin code nor the city name is the test.

The notification names its own areas, usually by corporation, municipality or panchayat. Match your branch to the name the notification uses, and keep that mapping where payroll can see it, because a branch that relocates can change zone without changing city.

How to Read a Wage Notification

Read it as two parts that move at different speeds. Where a notification splits the rate that way, one part holds between revisions and the other is adjusted on its own rhythm. The two together are the figure you owe.

Everything else on the page tells you whether that figure is yours: the employment it covers, the area it applies to, and the grade it is set against.

The Two Parts of a Rate

Section 7(1) says a minimum rate may be made up of a basic rate of wages and an allowance adjusted to the cost of living index, which the Code calls the cost of living allowance. Most people know it as the variable dearness allowance, or VDA.

Section 7(1) allows three shapes. A basic rate plus that allowance, a basic rate plus the cash value of any concessions, or one all-inclusive figure. Your notification will say which it uses.

The labour ministry’s compliance handbook for employers sets out what employers are expected to hold on file.

Which Part Moves, and How Often

The basic part sits still between full revisions. The living-cost part is the one that moves.

Section 7(2) leaves both the computing authority and the interval to the government that notified the rate. That is why your state may revise twice a year while the Code never names a month.

What you see on the notification	What it is doing
The employment category	Tells you whether this notification covers your business at all
Zone, area or class of town	Narrows it to your branch address
Unskilled, skilled, semi-skilled, highly-skilled	The four grades from section 6(6)(a)
Basic rate	The part that holds until the next full revision
VDA or cost of living allowance	The part that moves with the cost of living index
Per day and per month columns	Section 6(4) allows rates by the hour, the day or the month
Date of issue and date of effect	Not the same date. Section 8(3) explains the gap

Our salary per day calculator converts between the daily and monthly views once you have the right figure.

Finding the figure is the one-off part. Holding it correctly every month, for each grade and each branch, is what the payroll run has to do without being reminded.

When Do Minimum Wages by State Change?

On the date the notification names, which is often not the date on top of it.

Section 8(3) sets the default. A fixed or revised rate comes into force on the expiry of three months from the date of its issue, unless the notification provides otherwise.

Plenty of notifications do provide otherwise, which is why the date of effect is its own line on the document, and why it is worth reading rather than assuming.

Section 8(4) sets the outer limit. A government shall review or revise ordinarily at an interval not exceeding five years. That is a deadline, not a rhythm, and plenty of states move sooner.

How a Revision Is Made

Section 8(1) gives a government two routes to a revision. It appoints committees to hold enquiries and recommend, or it publishes its proposals and names a date, at least two months away, on which it will consider them.

Employers get a hearing either way. Section 8(2) puts employer representatives on any committee, matched by an equal number for employees and independent members capped at a third.

Both routes leave a paper trail before the rate lands. If you want warning of a revision rather than a surprise on the payroll run, the place to watch is your state labour department’s notification page, not a news report about it.

Do Old Notifications Still Count?

The Code repealed the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 when the four labour codes took effect on 21 November 2025. That did not wipe the slate.

Section 69(2) saves what came before. A notification made under the old Act is deemed to have been made under this Code, and it stays in force so far as it does not conflict with the Code.

That saving ends only when the Code itself, or a central notification, repeals the old notification.

So the rate binding you today may well be one issued years ago.

Your Minimum Wages by State Checklist

Trouble with minimum wages by state is rarely a decision to underpay. It is usually a figure looked up once, for one branch, and then left alone.

If I had to pick one line to check before a payroll run, it would be the skill grade on the employee record. It is the one input nobody re-reads, and the one your own system gets wrong most quietly.

1. Confirm whether you are on the central list in section 2(d) or read your state, and write the answer down where payroll can see it.
2. Find the employment category that covers your business, by name, not by what feels closest.
3. Record a skill grade against every employee, and check it against what they actually do rather than what they were hired as.
4. Map each branch to its zone, and re-check it when a branch moves.
5. Note the date of effect from the notification, not the date of issue.
6. Diarise the living-cost revision your state actually runs, because the Code does not name one.

If you are auditing state-level obligations anyway, professional tax and the labour welfare fund change by state too. The attendance to salary run is where all three land.

Frequently Asked Questions