Jamaica minimum wage
Jamaica's national minimum wage is set as a WEEKLY figure for a 40-hour work week by order of the Minister of Labour and Social Security under the Minimum Wage Act, on the recommendation of the Minimum Wage Advisory Commission, and approved by resolution of the House of Representatives. A separate, higher order covers industrial security guards.
| Current value | 17000 JMD per 40-hour week |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-07-01 |
| Official source | Jamaica Information Service — 'Minimum Wage Moves to $17,000, Up from $16,000': the House of Representatives approved the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Order, 2026 and the Minimum Wage (Industrial Security Guards) (Amendment) Order, 2026 on Tuesday 23 June 2026, raising the national minimum wage from $16,000 to $17,000 per 40-hour work week effective 1 July 2026 (Minister of Labour and Social Security, Hon. Pearnel Charles Jr.) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THE ORDER SETS A WEEKLY FIGURE — J$17,000 per 40-hour work week — and that is the statutory quantity served here. Hourly and overtime figures are DERIVED consequences published alongside it, not the primary instrument: $425/hour basic (up from $400), $637.50/hour at time-and-a-half (up from $600), $850/hour at double time (up from $800). Do not derive the weekly figure from an hourly rate or vice versa for legal purposes; the Order's operative number is the weekly one. A parallel Minimum Wage (Industrial Security Guards) (Amendment) Order, 2026 was approved on the same day and carries the same $17,000 weekly increase for that sector with corresponding hourly/overtime adjustments; existing allowances and benefits for security guards are unchanged. The Government has raised the minimum wage from $6,200/week in 2016 to $17,000/week in 2026. The Prime Minister publicly signalled in August 2025 an intention to move the minimum wage to $18,500 — that is a political commitment, not an order, and is NOT served. ACCESS PROBLEM: laws.moj.gov.jm statute and subsidiary-legislation PDFs are image-only scans and unreadable by machine, so the gazetted Order text itself could not be parsed; the Jamaica Information Service (the Government's official information agency) is the citable primary announcement. Next revision expected around mid-2027 following the 2027/28 Budget Debate.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-06-01 | 16000 | Jamaica Information Service — 'Minimum Wage Moves to $16,000 |
Get it programmatically
curl https://latamref.dev/v1/jm/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://latamref.dev/v1/jm/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/jm/minimum-wageOther Jamaica series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates