Minimum wage in the Philippines by city and province, 2026

There is no single provincial minimum wage in the Philippines, and most cities do not have a wage order of their own. The daily floor follows the regional wage order for the address. Laguna and Batangas use CALABARZON city tiers. Cebu City is a higher Central Visayas class than Dumaguete. Bacolod and Iloilo share the Western Visayas rate. Pangasinan, including Dagupan, follows the Ilocos order with no city split.

Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Boards set those floors. BARMM uses its own board. A region can split the rate by sector, by establishment size, or by city tier, and a second tranche can land in the middle of the year.

The city sections below, plus NCR, Davao, and BARMM, were checked against NWPC pages on 23 September 2026. Other regional rows still follow the NWPC summary dated 2 September 2026 unless a later order is named. Read the NCR section before you treat the Metro Manila figure as settled. City answers: Laguna, Batangas, Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Pangasinan.

How the regional wage system works

The National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) provides the policy framework, but 17 regional boards (one per administrative region) issue their own wage orders setting the floor for their respective areas. BARMM runs an entirely separate system — its own Bangsamoro Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (BTWPB), independent of the national RTWPB network.

A wage order specifies:

• The daily minimum wage rate — often split by sector (non-agriculture / agriculture / retail-service with few workers) and sometimes by geography (city tier, province) within the same region
• The effective date, frequently rolled out in two tranches months apart
• Any exemptions or deferment provisions for micro-enterprises

Under RA 6727, a region generally cannot revise its wage order within 12 months of the last one — which is why some regions listed below have rates that are “stable for now” while others have a second tranche already scheduled.

NCR, Metro Manila, minimum wage in September 2026

The NWPC NCR page, updated 15 September 2026, lists two later orders on top of Wage Order NCR-26. Keep the three orders separate.

Wage Order NCR-26, effective 18 July 2025, is the last order that took effect without the dispute below.

NCR uses a 15-worker threshold for the lower retail and service rate. Most other regions use 10. A retail shop with 16 or more workers pays the full ₱695, not ₱658.

Wage Order NCR-27 was issued on 23 June 2026 and published on 9 July 2026 in the Philippine Star. NWPC’s own 1 July 2026 announcement dates the first tranche to 25 July 2026. The increase is ₱85 across two tranches. The first tranche is ₱60. The second is ₱25.

The same NCR page states that NCR-27 is subject to continuing litigation before RTC Pasig Branch 152 and RTC Navotas Branch 287. The Philippine Star reported on 6 September 2026 that Pasig RTC Branch 152 had issued a writ of preliminary injunction against the order, and that the Office of the Solicitor General had asked the court to resolve the motion to lift it. The Daily Tribune reported on 21 September 2026 that labor groups had asked the Supreme Court to set that injunction aside. Do not pay the NCR-27 rates, or the January 2027 tranche, until NWPC or the courts say the order is in force.

Wage Order NCR-28 was issued on 7 September 2026 and published on 11 September 2026 in the Daily Tribune. NWPC lists it as a ₱60 increase on the NCR-26 baseline.

TODO: the signed NCR-28 effectivity line was not in the NWPC download list used for this update. Publication on 11 September 2026, plus the usual 15 days after publication in a newspaper, points to 26 September 2026. Match that date to the signed order on the NCR page before the next payroll cut-off. The extra ₱25 scheduled for 20 January 2027 sits in NCR-27, the order that is in court. NCR-28, as the NWPC page posts it, is the ₱60 increase to ₱755 and ₱718.

Minimum wage by region (2026)

Luzon

CALABARZON city tiers under Wage Order IVA-22. The region has no single provincial rate. The rate depends on which tier the city or municipality falls under. The NWPC Region IVA page still shows this order, with the second tranche from 1 April 2026, as the current table.

The Extended Metropolitan Area includes Biñan and San Pedro in Laguna, Cainta, Antipolo, and Taytay in Rizal, and Bacoor, Dasmariñas, and Imus in Cavite. Component cities include Calamba, Santa Rosa, Cabuyao, and San Pablo in Laguna, Batangas City, Lipa, and Tanauan in Batangas, Lucena in Quezon, and Cavite City, Tagaytay, and Trece Martires in Cavite. The NWPC Region IVA page notes one exception. Rosario, Cavite, is a first-class municipality, but its non-agriculture rate is ₱600 and its agriculture rate is ₱525. If you are checking a smaller Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, or Quezon municipality that is not named above, confirm its tier in Wage Order IVA-22. City write-ups: Laguna and Batangas.

Visayas

Central Visayas tiers. Class A is ₱540 and covers Cebu City, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, Carcar, Danao, Naga, Talisay, plus Compostela, Consolacion, Cordova, Liloan, Minglanilla, and San Fernando, called Expanded Metro Cebu on the NWPC Region VII page. Class B is ₱500 and covers the rest of Cebu province, all of Bohol and Negros Oriental, including Dumaguete, and Siquijor. There is no separate lower rate for small retail or service establishments in this region. Distressed employers can apply for a temporary exemption. Full breakdown in the Cebu and Dumaguete sections below. Iloilo is Region VI, not Region VII. See Iloilo.

Mindanao

Region X (Northern Mindanao) Category I (₱500): Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Malaybalay, Valencia, Gingoog, El Salvador, Ozamiz, plus Tagoloan, Villanueva, Jasaan, Opol, Maramag, Quezon, Manolo Fortich, Lugait. Category II (₱485): everywhere else, including all of Camiguin.

Davao Region on the NWPC page covers Davao City, Digos, Island Garden of Samal, Mati, Panabo, and Tagum, plus the provinces named in the order. From 1 September 2026 the second tranche is ₱540 non-agriculture and ₱525 agriculture, with no city tiers. See the Davao section for the province-name gap.

Provincial rate versus a city tier

A “provincial minimum wage” search usually wants the rate outside Metro Manila, or the rate for one named province. Philippine wage orders do not work that way.

The board covers a region. Inside that region, three patterns show up.

One rate for the whole region. CAR, Cagayan Valley, MIMAROPA, and Bicol are in this group, sometimes with a small-establishment or agriculture split but with no city list. If you employ someone in Baguio or in a Bicol municipality, you read the regional row, not a city ordinance.

A split by province or area, still inside one order. Central Luzon sets one non-agriculture rate for Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Zambales, and a lower rate for Aurora. Northern Mindanao uses Category I cities and Category II for everywhere else. The province name matters, and the city name can matter, but both numbers come from the same wage order.

A city tier inside one province. This is the Laguna and Batangas case, and the Cebu versus Dumaguete case. Two addresses in the same province can have different floors because the wage order lists cities, not because the province passed its own wage law. If the city is not named in the order, it takes the residual class. That residual class is ₱525 non-agriculture in CALABARZON’s lowest municipalities, and ₱500 in Central Visayas Class B.

Establishment size is a third cut, and it is not geographic. Region VI, which covers Bacolod and Iloilo, pays ₱550, ₱525, or ₱520 based on headcount and agriculture, with no separate highly urbanized city rate. Region I, which covers Pangasinan, does the same at ₱505 and ₱480.

Minimum wage by city or province, 2026

These sections map the cities people search to the wage order that covers them. The NWPC regional pages for Regions I, IVA, VI, and VII still showed these orders as current on 23 September 2026.

Laguna minimum wage 2026

Laguna has no single provincial rate. It uses CALABARZON’s city tiers under Wage Order IVA-22. The second tranche has been in force since 1 April 2026.

Agriculture is ₱525 in the Extended Metropolitan Area, in component cities, and in first-class municipalities, and ₱508 in the lowest tier. Retail and service establishments with 10 or fewer workers pay ₱508 everywhere in the region, including Biñan and Calamba. A shop in Santa Rosa with 11 workers pays the ₱600 non-agriculture rate. A shop with 10 workers pays ₱508.

The wage order, not this page, is the list of which municipality is first-class. If the address is not one of the six cities in the table, read the annex of Wage Order IVA-22 before you set the rate. TODO: the posted IVA-22 PDF did not yield a machine-readable municipality list on 23 September 2026. This page names only the cities already in the NWPC area description. It does not assign a class to any other municipality.

Batangas minimum wage 2026

₱600 a day in Batangas City, Lipa, and Tanauan. ₱550 in first-class municipalities. ₱525 in lower-class municipalities. Wage Order IVA-22, second tranche from 1 April 2026. Those three are the component cities this guide can name from the order’s area description. The rest of Batangas province is not automatically ₱600. Agriculture is ₱525 in the higher tiers and ₱508 in the lowest tier. Retail and service establishments with 10 or fewer workers pay ₱508 across CALABARZON, including inside Batangas City.

Cebu minimum wage 2026

₱540 a day in Cebu City and Expanded Metro Cebu. ₱500 a day elsewhere in Central Visayas. Wage Order ROVII-26, effective 4 October 2025, still the current order on the NWPC Region VII page.

Class A, ₱540, is Cebu City, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, Talisay, Carcar, Danao, Naga, and the municipalities of Compostela, Consolacion, Cordova, Liloan, Minglanilla, and San Fernando. Class B, ₱500, is the rest of Cebu province, plus Bohol, Negros Oriental, and Siquijor. Toledo, Bogo, and the other Cebu cities that are not in the Class A list take ₱500. Dumaguete is in that Class B group. See Dumaguete.

Region VII has no lower small-establishment rate. A retail shop pays the class rate for its address. Distressed employers can apply for a temporary exemption. There is no separate Cebu province rate sitting under the city rate.

Dumaguete minimum wage 2026

₱500 a day. Wage Order ROVII-26, effective 4 October 2025, lists Dumaguete with the Class B cities: Bais, Bayawan, Bogo, Canlaon, Guihulngan, Tagbilaran, Tanjay, and Toledo, and with the municipalities outside Expanded Metro Cebu. The NWPC Region VII page names Dumaguete in that Class B note. It is not a ₱540 address. Negros Oriental shares the ₱500 rate. The Negros Island Region wage board has not issued an order, so Dumaguete stays under Region VII, Class B, until it does. Region VII does not cut the rate again for a small shop.

Iloilo minimum wage 2026

₱550 a day for non-agriculture establishments with more than 10 workers, ₱525 for 10 or fewer, and ₱520 in agriculture. Wage Order RBVI-29, effective 19 November 2025. The NWPC Region VI page covers Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Guimaras, Iloilo, and Negros Occidental, including the highly urbanized cities of Iloilo and Bacolod, at those same three rates.

Iloilo City does not get a higher floor because it is highly urbanized. A 12-person shop in Iloilo City and a 12-person shop in Iloilo province both pay ₱550 if the work is non-agriculture. A shop with 10 workers pays ₱525. Agriculture pays ₱520. Compare that with Cebu, where the split is the map, not the headcount.

Pangasinan minimum wage 2026

₱505 a day for non-agriculture establishments with 10 or more workers, and ₱480 a day for smaller establishments and for agriculture. Wage Order RB 1-24, effective 19 November 2025. The NWPC Region I page covers Pangasinan with Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, and La Union, and it lists Dagupan, Alaminos, San Carlos, and Urdaneta with the other Ilocos cities. None of them has a separate rate. Dagupan pays the same ₱505 or ₱480 as a municipality in Pangasinan. Count heads, then apply the sector. Do not look for a Dagupan wage order.

Bacolod and Negros Occidental minimum wage 2026

₱550 a day for establishments with more than 10 workers, ₱525 a day for 10 or fewer, and ₱520 a day in agriculture. Wage Order RBVI-29, effective 19 November 2025. Bacolod uses the same three numbers as Iloilo. The NWPC Region VI page still lists the highly urbanized city of Bacolod inside that order.

Bacolod and the rest of Negros Occidental remain under Region VI because the Negros Island Region wage board has not issued an order. The Region VI rate applies until it does. Dumaguete, on the other side of the island, is not on this order. It is Region VII, Class B, at ₱500.

Davao City minimum wage 2026

₱540 a day non-agriculture, ₱525 agriculture. Wage Order RB XI-24. The second tranche took effect on 1 September 2026. The first tranche, from 13 March 2026, was ₱525 and ₱515. Davao City, Digos, Tagum, Panabo, Mati, and the Island Garden of Samal share that one regional rate. Davao Region has no city tiers on the NWPC page. The page still lists Compostela Valley and Davao del Sur, the pre-2013 names, with Davao del Norte and Davao Oriental.

TODO: the NWPC Region XI page does not name Davao Occidental or Davao de Oro. Confirm the signed order’s coverage clause before payroll in those provinces.

Boundary gotchas employers get wrong

Two jurisdictional overlaps trip up even experienced payroll teams:

• Cotabato City follows BARMM, not Region XII. Cotabato City is geographically inside North Cotabato province, Region XII, at ₱460 a day for non-agriculture. The city follows Wage Order BARMM-05 instead. From 6 August 2026 the Cotabato City non-agriculture rate is ₱436, and agriculture is ₱411. That is still below Region XII. The second tranche on 1 December 2026 takes Cotabato City to ₱461 and ₱436. The 63 barangays that transferred from North Cotabato to BARMM in 2019, the Special Geographic Area, follow the lower BARMM tier, not Region XII and not the Cotabato City tier. That lower tier is ₱411 non-agriculture and ₱401 agriculture until 1 December 2026.
• Negros Island Region exists in law, but its wage board has not issued a wage order. NIR was created by RA 12000. Until the wage board issues an order, Negros Occidental, including Bacolod, stays under Region VI at ₱550, ₱525, or ₱520, and Negros Oriental, including Dumaguete, and Siquijor stay under Region VII, Class B, at ₱500. See Bacolod and Dumaguete.

BARMM’s own wage system

BARMM sets wages through its own Bangsamoro Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board, not the national RTWPB network. Wage Order BARMM-05 took effect on 6 August 2026. It was issued on 15 July 2026 and published on 21 July 2026. The NWPC BARMM page is the source for the table below. The 2 September 2026 NWPC summary matches these current figures and shows the 1 December 2026 tranche.

The wage order pairs agriculture and retail on the same line as the agriculture column above. BARMM-04 had a separate, lower Special Geographic Area line. BARMM-05, and the NWPC page, put that area with Tawi-Tawi and the provinces in the table. The page header lists the current band as ₱401 to ₱436, which is the pair in force before 1 December 2026.

TODO: Sulu is not named on the current NWPC BARMM table. Confirm Sulu against the signed order before you apply either tier there. The scanned order text is too rough to settle that row.

What counts as basic wage

The minimum wage is a cash wage floor — it does not include:

• Board or lodging provided by the employer (which may be credited against the wage in some cases, but only if the employee freely accepts and the deduction does not bring cash wages below the floor)
• Cost-of-living allowance (COLA) where mandated separately by wage order
• Premiums for overtime, night shift, holiday, or rest day work

COLA (Cost of Living Allowance) is sometimes integrated into the minimum wage rate in a wage order — check whether the stated rate already includes COLA or whether COLA is an additional amount.

Allowable deductions

Employers may only deduct from wages what the law explicitly permits:

• SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG employee contributions
• Withholding tax on compensation
• Deductions authorised in writing by the employee (e.g. salary loans, union dues)

The statutory items above (contributions, tax, authorised deductions) routinely bring net take-home pay below the gross minimum wage figure — that’s normal and lawful. What’s prohibited is any other, unauthorised deduction that reduces pay below the minimum wage. Note that minimum wage earners (MWEs) are exempt from income tax on their statutory minimum wage plus holiday, overtime, night-differential, and hazard pay — relevant if you’re computing take-home pay near the wage floor.

Penalties for underpayment

Underpayment of minimum wage is a criminal offence under the Labor Code. Penalties include fines and imprisonment of company officers. The DOLE conducts routine labour standards inspections — a single complaint from an employee can trigger a full inspection of your payroll records.

How employers should monitor wage orders

Employers with headcount across multiple regions need a monitoring process. A practical approach:

1. Check the NWPC consolidated wage rate table quarterly, or subscribe to NWPC email advisories
2. Implement the new rate from the effectivity date in the wage order — there is no grace period
3. Document the wage adjustment in payroll records and notify employees in writing

The HR and payroll service tracks these regional orders, including the city tiers and the NCR litigation, and applies the rate that is actually in force to managed payroll. Use the payroll calculator to see employer cost at the rate for the address, see the payroll service, or book a consultation if the headcount sits in more than one region.