Papua New Guinea minimum wage
Papua New Guinea has a single national minimum hourly wage covering the private sector, determined by the tripartite Minimum Wages Board (government, PNG Trade Union Congress, Employers Federation of PNG, plus youth and church representatives) constituted under the Industrial Relations Act and administered by the Department of Labour & Industrial Relations. A determination is lodged with the Industrial Registrar and gazetted in the National Gazette.
| Current value | 5 PGK per hour |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| Official source | Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council — 'Statement to the National Parliament by Prime Minister Hon. James Marape, GCL, MP' (7th Year Performance Report 2019–2025), delivered 6 June 2026: the Government increased 'the hourly minimum wage from K3.50 to K5.00 effective 1 January 2026', following the Minimum Wages Board review funded at K4.5 million of provincial and regional consultations |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
CORRECTION TO THE LAUNCHING BRIEF. The brief anticipated that PNG's minimum wage would still be a many-years-stale determination and asked for it to be reported however old. That is no longer true: the rate WAS frozen at K3.50/hour set by the 2014 Minimum Wages Board Determination and unchanged for about a decade, but the Board was reconstituted in 2023-2024, held public hearings across more than 20 centres through 2025 (Kerema, Popondetta, Alotau, Daru, Manus, Kavieng, Kimbe, Kokopo, Madang, Vanimo, Wewak, Lae, Mt Hagen, Goroka, Port Moresby), and issued a new determination that the Government announced on 18 September 2025 during PNG's 50th Independence anniversary. STAGED PATH: K5.00/hour from 1 January 2026, K5.25/hour from January 2027, K5.50/hour from January 2028 (ILO, 'ILO welcomes new national minimum wage for Papua New Guinea', https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/ilo-welcomes-new-national-minimum-wage-papua-new-guinea — the ILO provided technical support to the Board; used here to corroborate the out-year steps, which the PM's statement does not enumerate). Because the 2027 and 2028 steps are pre-agreed in the same determination, this series will step up on 1 January each year without a fresh Board inquiry — hence the 365-day cycle. SOURCING LIMIT: the operative instrument is the Minimum Wages Board Determination itself, lodged with the Industrial Registrar and gazetted in the National Gazette. The National Gazette is not published online free of charge, and the Department of Labour & Industrial Relations site (labour.gov.pg — reachable, no bot wall) publishes the Board's Terms of Reference and hearing schedule but NOT the determination text or its number. The K5.00 figure and the 1 January 2026 effective date are therefore taken from the Prime Minister's own statement to Parliament rather than from the gazetted determination. Secondary reports cite it as 'Determination No. 1 of 2025'; that citation is NOT independently verified here and should not be served as fact. Coverage caveat: the national minimum wage governs formal private-sector employment, which is a small share of PNG's workforce — Treasury's 2026 Budget puts formal-sector jobs at roughly 300,000 nationally.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-07-01 | 3.5 | 2014 Minimum Wages Board Determination — referenced by name |
Get it programmatically
curl https://ausref.dev/v1/pg/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/pg/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/pg/minimum-wageOther Papua New Guinea series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates