Netherlands minimum wage 2026: the hourly rate

For workers aged 21 and over the statutory minimum is € 14,71 an hour from 1 January 2026 and € 14,99 an hour from 1 July 2026. Those are gross hourly figures and they are the only statutory minimum wage the Netherlands has.

The July increase is € 0,28, or 1,90%. It is not an unusual event: the rate is reset every 1 January and every 1 July, so a Dutch pay budget written in December covers six months rather than twelve, and a twelve-month cost model that uses one rate throughout has already understated the second half of the year.

Because the minimum is hourly, what the employer owes follows the hours actually worked. Forty hours a week at € 14,99 is € 599,60 gross; thirty-six hours a week at the same rate is € 539,64. Both are ordinarily described as full time in the Netherlands, and they carry different lawful minimums. A contract that fixes a monthly salary therefore has to be checked against the hours behind it, not the other way round, and it has to be checked again in July.

The figures are published by Rijksoverheid and they are identical for every sector and every employer. A CAO can set pay above them, and in many sectors does, through a wage scale that a generally binding CAO imposes on employers that never signed it. Nothing can set pay below them.

There is no statutory monthly minimum wage in the Netherlands, and there has not been one since 1 January 2024. The fixed statutory minimum monthly, weekly and daily wages were abolished on that date and replaced by a single hourly rate, and Rijksoverheid states the position in terms.

The reform fixed a real anomaly. Before 2024 an employee on 36 hours and an employee on 40 hours had the same statutory monthly minimum, which meant the person working four extra hours each week had the lower effective hourly rate. Paying by the hour removes that, and it removes the argument about what a full-time week is.

A monthly amount does still appear in the statute, and it is the most misquoted Dutch employment figure in circulation. Article 8(1)(b) Wet minimumloon en minimumvakantiebijslag sets € 2.337,00 from 1 July 2026, but it does so solely as a reference figure for calculating benefits and allowances under other Acts that point at the WML. It is not a wage an employer owes anybody, and publishing it as one inverts the whole point of the 2024 reform.

So a monthly minimum for a given employee is a calculation rather than a lookup: agreed hours multiplied by the rate in force for that half of the year. Any site quoting a Dutch minimum monthly wage as an employer obligation has published the benefits reference figure by mistake, and a payroll built on it will be wrong for everyone who does not happen to work the assumed week.

The Minister of SZW sets the minimumuurloon twice a year, on 1 January and on 1 July, under article 14 Wet minimumloon en minimumvakantiebijslag. The indexation is formulaic rather than negotiated, which is why the figure can be relied on months ahead even though it changes often.

The January figure takes half of the CPB’s forecast of contract wage growth for the coming year, from the Macro Economische Verkenningen, plus a correction for the gap between the previous year’s two forecasts. The July figure takes the difference between that half-forecast and the CPB’s updated forecast in the Centraal Economisch Plan. Contract wage growth here means the average across the market sector, the subsidised sector and government, as the CPB publishes it.

The amount can never be reduced. If the formula would produce a cut, the rate is left where it is and the shortfall is carried forward, so the Dutch minimum wage only ever moves in one direction. That is worth knowing when modelling a low-wage payroll over several years: the downside case for an employer is a flat rate, never a falling one, and the carried-forward shortfall reappears at the next reset.

Article 14(5) allows the government to override the formula by order in council in exceptional circumstances: where wage growth is high enough to threaten employment, or where growth in social security volumes would force a significant rise in taxes or premiums. The power exists and is worth knowing about. The ordinary position, and the one to plan on, is the half-yearly formula.

The minimumjeugdloon applies below the age of 21 and is a fixed percentage of the adult rate. The percentages are the stable part: 80% at 20, 60% at 19, 50% at 18, 39,5% at 17, 34,5% at 16 and 30% at 15. The cash amounts move with the adult rate every January and July.

In cash, from 1 January 2026 and then from 1 July 2026:

• age 20: € 11,77, then € 11,99
• age 19: € 8,83, then € 8,99
• age 18: € 7,36, then € 7,50
• age 17: € 5,81, then € 5,92
• age 16: € 5,07, then € 5,17
• age 15: € 4,41, then € 4,50

The rate follows the birthday, not the contract or the pay period. A payroll that does not track dates of birth will underpay somebody in the month they turn 18 or 21, and the correction is owed from the birthday rather than from the month end. This is an ordinary payroll control rather than an edge case, and it is the reason date of birth is one of the four items an employer must hold in the signed employee statement before employment begins.

Separate and lower rates apply to bbl apprentices aged 18 to 20 under the beroepsbegeleidende leerweg. If you are hiring on an apprenticeship route, check that specific table rather than reading the figures above across to it.

One point in the employer’s favour at this end of the market: employees under 21 who are paid for no more than 48 hours in a four-week period, or 52 hours in a month, attract the low AWf rate whatever kind of contract they hold. Small student contracts cost less in employer premiums than their contract type would otherwise suggest.

On top of the hourly wage sits vakantiegeld, the statutory holiday allowance of 8% under article 15 Wet minimumloon en minimumvakantiebijslag. It is a statutory minimum in its own right, it is calculated on the employee’s loon, and it applies to a minimum-wage worker exactly as it applies to a director.

Pay above three times the minimum wage may be left out of the 8% calculation, so the statutory floor does not compel 8% on very high salaries and anything beyond that point is a matter of contract. There is no statutory payment month. The overwhelming market practice is a single payment in May or June, accrued over the preceding twelve months.

Dutch salaries are normally quoted excluding vakantiegeld, with the 8% sitting on top, but that is market convention rather than a rule, so the arbeidsovereenkomst has to say which. Stating it in the offer costs one sentence and prevents the most common Dutch offer-letter dispute there is. The full treatment, including what the 8% is calculated on and the cap that applies to it, is in vakantiegeld and holiday allowance.

For a minimum-wage hire the arithmetic is simple enough to do in the offer meeting: hours worked, multiplied by the rate for that half of the year, plus 8%. What it is not is a 13th month. Vakantiegeld is 8%, a 13th month is a contractual or CAO benefit, and the two can exist side by side on the same payslip.

A minimum-wage hire costs more than the hourly rate, and the gap is predictable. Budget about 26% on top of base pay: 8% vakantiegeld plus about 18% employer social charges, both expressed on base pay, assuming no CAO applies and no occupational pension scheme is compulsory.

The employer charges are AWf, Aof with the Wko surcharge, the Whk and the werkgeversheffing Zvw. Together they come to 16,77% of total gross pay in 2026 on a permanent written contract in business services. At this end of the pay scale they apply to every euro earned, because the € 79.409 premium ceiling is far above anything a minimum-wage contract will reach. The line-by-line arithmetic is in the cost of hiring worked example.

Contract type is the biggest single lever here. A fixed-term, oral or on-call contract carries AWf at 7,74% instead of 2,74%, which is 5,00 percentage points on the whole wage. Hourly-paid and seasonal roles are exactly where Dutch employers reach for a flexible contract, and exactly where that premium lands hardest.

A CAO can also set a wage scale above the statutory floor and impose extra leave, a 13th month or a pension on top. A generally binding CAO binds an employer that never signed it, and the CAO’s own scope clause decides whether it applies, so the question is settled before the first payroll rather than after it. How the rates and credits then run through the monthly return is set out in Netherlands payroll explained.

Employment at these rates is simple to run and unforgiving to get wrong, because the rate changes mid-year and the youth rates change with a birthday. Employer of Record Netherlands arranges Dutch employment for people you have already chosen: your hire is employed on a Dutch arbeidsovereenkomst, paid in euro through Dutch payroll, with loonheffingen withheld and filed every month.