Iraq minimum wage
Iraq's statutory minimum monthly wage for workers, fixed by the Council of Ministers on the recommendation of the tripartite committee formed in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, under Article 63(Second) of Labour Law No. 37 of 2015. It applies to workers covered by the Labour Law — i.e. the private sector and workers under contract — and is a floor, not a pay scale.
| Current value | 350000 IQD per month |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2018-01-01 |
| Official source | Council of Ministers decision of 18 December 2017, taken under Article 63(Second) of Labour Law No. 37 of 2015 — minimum worker's wage set at IQD 350,000 per month in place of IQD 250,000 (which had been fixed by Council of Ministers Resolution No. 178 of 2013), effective 1 January 2018 (Alsumaria TV, reporting the Council of Ministers communiqué); enabling statute: Labour Law No. 37 of 2015, ILO NATLEX record |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
IQD 350,000 per month is the federal statutory floor. It was set by the Council of Ministers on 18 Dec 2017 under Article 63(Second) of Labour Law No. 37 of 2015, raising it from IQD 250,000 (Council of Ministers Resolution No. 178 of 2013), with effect from 1 January 2018; the stated rationale was general wage levels and cost of living, and reducing the cost advantage of foreign labour (Council of Ministers communiqué reported by Alsumaria TV, https://www.alsumaria.tv/news/224446/). NO INCREASE HAS BEEN ENACTED SINCE — searches of Iraqi government and press sources through 24 Jul 2026 found no later Council of Ministers decision, so 350,000 remains in force after more than eight years. This is politically live: an Iraqi research study reported by Al-Mada argues the figure no longer meets living costs and proposes IQD 1.2-2.0 million/month. Treat any such figure as advocacy, NOT as an enacted rate. DO NOT SUBSTITUTE PUBLIC-SECTOR PAY: Iraqi civil-service and state-enterprise salaries are set by the separate public-sector salary scale (سلم الرواتب) under the State Employees Salaries Law, whose grade minima are well above IQD 350,000; those are pay scales for government employees, not the Labour Law minimum wage, and must not be served here. REGIONAL DIVERGENCE: the Kurdistan Region legislates its own labour matters and its practice can differ from the federal floor. ENFORCEMENT: under the Labour Law an employer who breaches the minimum-wage provisions is liable to a penalty of not less than twice the prescribed minimum wage. ACCESS NOTE: the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs did not expose a fetchable page carrying the 350,000 figure from this location, and the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers site (cabinet.iq) serves its static pages via JavaScript and returned an empty shell to a plain fetch; the figure is therefore sourced to the Council of Ministers communiqué as reported by Iraqi press, with the enabling statute cited from ILO NATLEX.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2013-01-01 | 250000 | Council of Ministers Resolution No. (178) of 2013 — minimum |
Get it programmatically
curl https://mearef.dev/v1/iq/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://mearef.dev/v1/iq/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://mearef.dev/provenance/iq/minimum-wageOther Iraq series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates