Minimum Wage in Germany (2026): Rates, Mini-Jobs and Employer Cost

The statutory minimum wage is €13.90 gross per hour worked from 1 January 2026, set by the Fifth Minimum Wage Adjustment Regulation of 5 November 2025. It rose 8.4% from €12.82, the largest step since the jump to €12.00 in October 2022. Germany sits near the top of our global minimum wage tracker, which compares the legal rate in 195 countries on one monthly basis.

Germany sets the minimum per hour, not per month. A full-time employee on 40 hours a week works about 173.3 hours a month, so the monthly floor is roughly €2,409 gross, or €28,912 a year. At the ECB reference rate of 23 October 2026 (US$1.1193 to the euro), €13.90 is about US$15.56 an hour.

The statutory rate is the same in every federal state, for every company size and for local and foreign staff. Where a higher sector minimum applies, that rate replaces it, as set out in the sector minimum wages section. For pay levels above the floor, see our guide to the average salary in Germany.

An independent Minimum Wage Commission of employer and union representatives, with non-voting academic advisers, proposes the rate every two years. The federal government then adopts the proposal by regulation. It can accept or reject the proposal but cannot change the figure.

On 27 June 2025 the commission agreed unanimously on two steps: €13.90 from 1 January 2026 and €14.60 from 1 January 2027. The commission weighs collective pay trends and, under its updated rules of procedure, 60% of the gross median wage of full-time employees as a reference value, in line with the EU directive on adequate minimum wages.

For planning, the 2027 step lifts the full-time monthly floor to about €2,531, a 5.0% rise. The Federal Statistical Office estimates that up to 7 million jobs, about 18%, could be affected by it. Our Germany hiring guide tracks these changes alongside contracts, payroll and permits.

Germany introduced a statutory minimum of €8.50 an hour on 1 January 2015. By January 2027 it will be €14.60, up 72% in twelve years, with most of the increase coming after 2022, when parliament raised the rate to €12.00 by law rather than through the commission.

Every employee working in Germany is entitled to at least €13.90 an hour: full-time, part-time, mini-job, seasonal, fixed-term and probationary staff alike. Any agreement to pay less is void to that extent, and an employee cannot waive the claim except through a court settlement.

The rule follows the place of work, not the employer’s home country. Section 20 of the Minimum Wage Act obliges employers based in Germany or abroad to pay the minimum to anyone working in Germany, and foreign employees need the right residence title, covered in our guide to EOR visas and work permits.

Foreign employers who send staff to Germany in the sectors listed in the Act to Combat Undeclared Work, such as construction, hospitality, transport and logistics, building cleaning, meat processing, trade fair set-up and security, must file a written notice in German with customs before the work starts. The notice names each worker, the place of work, the expected duration and a contact person in Germany.

The exemptions in Section 22 of the Minimum Wage Act are narrow and tied to specific situations, not to industries or company size.

Apprentices fall under the Vocational Training Act instead. The minimum allowance is €724 a month in the first year for training that started in 2026. For training starting in 2027 the figures below apply, published in the Federal Law Gazette on 7 October 2026 and confirmed by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training.

Collective agreements can set lower training pay for their members, but most set higher figures.

Several industries have their own minimum wages, set by collective agreement and made binding on every employer in the sector by federal regulation under the Posted Workers Act. Where a sector rate is higher than €13.90, it takes precedence, including for foreign employers posting staff to Germany and for agency workers placed in the sector.

Long-term care has its own three-tier minimum under the Seventh Care Working Conditions Regulation, which runs from 1 July 2026 to 30 September 2028, according to the Federal Government. Care staff on a five-day week also get nine days of extra paid leave a year on top of the statutory minimum.

Mini-job staff are entitled to the full €13.90 an hour. The mini-job earnings ceiling is tied to the minimum wage (130 times the hourly rate divided by 3), so it rises with every increase: €603 a month in 2026 and €633 from 1 January 2027. At €13.90 that allows about 43 hours a month.

Above the ceiling, a job enters the transition zone, known as a midi-job, which runs from €603.01 to €2,000 a month in 2026 and from €633.01 in 2027. Midi-job staff are fully insured, but pay reduced employee contributions that rise gradually to the normal rate at €2,000.

A commercial mini-job at the €603 ceiling therefore costs the employer about €188 a month on top of pay, plus statutory accident insurance, according to the Minijob-Zentrale. Private household mini-jobs carry lower flat rates.

The test is whether total pay for the hours worked reaches €13.90 an hour, by the payment deadline. Most pay that rewards ordinary work counts, while payments with a separate purpose do not.

The minimum wage is due no later than the last bank working day of the month after the work was done. Overtime can be banked in a written working time account, but no more than 50% of the contractual monthly hours may go into it, and the balance must be cleared by time off or payment within 12 months.

A lump-sum annual bonus paid once a year only counts in the month it is paid. Spreading Christmas pay over twelve months is the common way to make it count toward the hourly floor.

An employer pays about 23% on top of gross pay for a full-time minimum-wage employee. Social insurance is split roughly half and half: the employer pays 9.3% for pension, 7.3% for health plus half of the fund’s add-on rate (2.9% on average in 2026), 1.8% for long-term care and 1.3% for unemployment, according to the 2026 rates summarised by Haufe.

On top come the insolvency levy (0.15%), the maternity levy U2 and, for employers with up to 30 staff, the sick pay levy U1, both set by each health fund, plus statutory accident insurance, which depends on the industry risk class. The estimate below allows about 2% for these together; office roles usually sit below that and construction well above.

At the minimum wage none of the contribution ceilings apply, so every euro of pay attracts the full rate. In Saxony the employer’s care share is 1.3% rather than 1.8%. For 2027 the full-time cost rises to roughly €3,117 a month on the same rates; the October 2026 health fund forecast points to an unchanged 2.9% average add-on, which still has to be formally set.

The wage and contributions are not the whole bill: paid leave, public holidays, sick pay and any collective agreement extras add more. Our guide to employer costs and payroll in Germany covers the full picture at every salary level, and the EOR cost calculator models a specific role.

A full-time employee on the minimum wage pays income tax, but not much. The 2026 basic allowance is €12,348 a year, and the entry rate of 14% applies above it under Section 32a of the Income Tax Act. After the employee lump sum and social insurance deductions, taxable income on €28,912 a year lands around €21,500 to €22,000.

The employer withholds wage tax monthly based on the employee’s tax class and remits it to the tax office with the payroll filing. No solidarity surcharge is due at this income level, and church tax of 8% or 9% of the income tax applies only to registered church members.

Employees with children pay a lower care rate, and the exact wage tax depends on the health fund and the payroll software’s calculation. Treat the net figure as a planning estimate, not a payslip.

The Working Hours Act limits work to 8 hours a day on six working days a week, so 48 hours. A day can run to 10 hours if the average comes back to 8 hours over six months or 24 weeks. Employees need 11 hours of rest between shifts and a break of 30 minutes after six hours, or 45 minutes after nine.

German law sets no statutory overtime premium. Every overtime hour must still be paid at least at €13.90, either in the month after or through a working time account within the 50% limit. Collective agreements commonly add 25% or more for overtime.

Sunday and public holiday work is banned in principle, with exceptions for hospitality, care, transport and other listed activities. The government plans to move from a daily to a weekly maximum and to legislate electronic time recording, but neither change was law as of October 2026.

Statutory annual leave is 24 working days on a six-day week, which equals 20 days on a five-day week. Holiday pay is based on average earnings over the previous 13 weeks, so it can never fall below the minimum wage. Most collective agreements and many contracts give 25 to 30 days.

Parental leave of up to three years per child is unpaid by the employer; the state pays parental allowance. Mini-job staff have the same leave, holiday and sick pay rights as full-time employees, in proportion to their working days.

For mini-job staff outside private households and for all employees in the sectors listed in the Act to Combat Undeclared Work, the employer must record the start, end and length of each day’s work by the end of the seventh calendar day after the work. Records must be kept for at least two years.

Documents that prove minimum wage compliance, such as contracts, time records and payslips, must be kept in Germany and in German for the duration of the work, up to two years, and produced on request. Foreign employers posting staff must hold them at the place of work or make them available there.

Outside these groups the minimum wage records duty does not apply, but the Federal Labour Court ruled in September 2022 that employers must record all working time for every employee. Keeping full time records is the safe default for any minimum-wage role.

Customs enforces the minimum wage through its Financial Control of Undeclared Work unit (Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit), which runs random and risk-based checks and follows up tip-offs. Inspectors can enter premises, question staff and demand records on the spot.

A fine of €2,500 or more can lead to exclusion from public contracts until the employer shows it is reliable again, and contracting authorities check the competition register for contracts worth €50,000 or more. The employee’s claim to the unpaid wage cannot lapse under contractual deadlines, and social security contributions are due on the wage owed, not just the wage paid.

The minimum wage sits at a little over half of typical full-time pay. The Federal Statistical Office put median gross annual earnings of full-time employees at €54,066 in 2025, including bonuses; a full-time minimum-wage year of €28,912 is about 53% of that. Mean gross monthly pay for full-time staff was €4,784 in April 2025.

The gap varies sharply by region and sector. In the eastern states the median was €46,013, so the minimum reaches about 63% of it, and in hospitality, the lowest-paid sector at €35,545, about 81%.

According to Destatis, up to 4.8 million jobs were paid below €13.90 in April 2025. The minimum matters most for hospitality, agriculture, retail, cleaning and entry-level service roles. For professional and technical hiring it is a compliance floor, not a benchmark: see the average salary guide for Germany for pay by sector and role.

A foreign company that employs people in Germany must run German payroll, register each employee with a health fund, withhold wage tax, pay social security monthly and keep minimum wage records in German. The most common errors are applying the statutory rate where a sector minimum applies, missing the mini-job ceiling change on 1 January and banking overtime beyond the 50% limit.

Companies without a German entity can hire through an employer of record, which becomes the legal employer and takes on payroll, contributions, records and inspections. Ask any provider how it identifies the right sector minimum and wage group for your role, since a generic payroll set-up will default to €13.90.

Our ranking of the best EOR providers in Germany compares price, entity ownership and compliance support. The Germany hiring guide covers contracts, notice periods, work permits and total cost for every salary level.

Short answers to what employers ask most about the German minimum wage, checked against the Federal Government, the Minimum Wage Act, Destatis and the Minijob-Zentrale on 24 October 2026.