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- The new Statutory Minimum Wage rate applies across employment types, including monthly-rated, daily-rated, hourly-rated, and part‑time employees.
- Employees with disabilities remain protected under the Minimum Wage Ordinance.
- The monthly wage threshold requiring employers to record total working hours has also been increased to HK$17,600.
Hong Kong has raised its Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW) rate from HK$42.1 per hour to HK$43.1 per hour, with effect from 1 May 2026.
Under the Minimum Wage Ordinance (MWO), the SMW applies to employees regardless of their employment type, including whether they are:
- monthly-rated, daily-rated, hourly-rated, piece-rated, permanent, casual, full-time, or part-time, etc.
- employed under a continuous contract as defined in the Employment Ordinance (EO)
However, the SMW does not apply to:
- live-in domestic workers (irrespective of their sex, race and nationality)
- student interns and work experience students as specified in the MWO
- persons to whom the EO does not apply
The SMW also protects employees with disabilities. A special arrangement is provided under the MWO for employees with disabilities to opt for a productivity assessment to determine whether they should be paid at no less than the SMW or at a rate commensurate with their assessed productivity.
For those employees with disabilities who have chosen this special arrangement, their employers must pay wages of not less than the amount calculated according to the new SMW rate and the degree of productivity assessed.
In addition, in tandem with the implementation of the new SMW rate, the monthly monetary cap on the requirement for employers to record the total number of hours worked by employees in a wage period under the EO has also been raised from HK$17,200 to HK$17,600 per month, effective from the same date.
Where an employee’s wages payable for a wage period falls below HK$17,600 per month, the employer must keep a record of the total number of hours worked by the employee in that wage period.
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