Minimum wage increase in Germany 2027: employer checklist

What changes on January 1, 2027

On January 1, 2027, the second stage of the Fifth Minimum Wage Adjustment Ordinance (Fünfte Mindestlohnanpassungsverordnung) of November 5, 2025 takes effect. The minimum wage goes from €13.90 to €14.60 gross for every hour worked. Since October 2022 the mini-job limit has been tied to the minimum wage, so it moves in the same step, from €603 to €633 a month.

The limit follows a fixed formula in Section 8(1a) of Social Code Book IV (SGB IV): minimum wage times 130, divided by 3, rounded up to the next full euro. That is what ten hours a week at the minimum wage earn. The Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced the limits for 2026 and 2027 together in a notice dated November 7, 2025, published in the Federal Gazette (Bundesanzeiger). The ordinance itself was promulgated on November 7, 2025, so the 2027 stage needs no further decision. Every rate since 2015 is on the page German minimum wage 2026 and 2027.

Values before and after the change

Source: Fifth Minimum Wage Adjustment Ordinance of November 5, 2025 (Federal Law Gazette 2025 I No. 268)

Checklist for payroll teams and software

• Raise hourly rates below €14.60 as of January 1, 2027. Store the raise as a new rate with a valid-from date so December keeps the old rate.
• Check fixed monthly salaries against the hours actually worked, especially for part-time staff who work extra hours.
• Recalculate mini-jobs paid above the minimum wage. These are the most likely to slip over the new monthly limit.
• Review working time accounts: extra hours that the salary covered so far may fall under the deadlines of Section 2(2) of the Minimum Wage Act once the rate goes up.
• Update the health insurance flat rate for commercial mini-jobs as soon as the average additional contribution rate for 2027 is published.
• Set the lower limit of the transition zone in your midi-job calculation to €633.01.
• Check care workers and apprentices separately, because different floors apply to them.

Hourly wages: the new rate applies per hour worked

The minimum wage is a gross amount per hour worked. The ordinance sets the new amount from January 1, 2027, so every hour worked from that day on costs at least €14.60. Hours worked in December are paid at the old rate, even when payroll for them runs in January.

Under the Minimum Wage Act (Mindestlohngesetz, MiLoG), the wage is due on the agreed pay date and no later than the last bank working day of the month after the month in which the work was done (Section 2(1) MiLoG). For January hours, that means the last bank working day in February at the latest. Paying the minimum wage late or not at all can lead to a fine of up to EUR 500,000 (Section 21(1) No. 13 and (3) MiLoG).

Fixed salaries: check every month against actual hours

For salaried staff, an annual average is not enough. German Customs (Zoll), the authority that audits the minimum wage, puts it this way: employees are entitled to the minimum wage for all hours worked in the pay period, paid on the due date. So divide the monthly salary by the hours actually worked that month and compare the result with €14.60.

Salaries set just above the floor can drop below it in months with many working days or with overtime. Hours beyond the contractual working time may only be settled later if a working time account (Arbeitszeitkonto) has been agreed in writing (Section 2(2) MiLoG). Without that agreement, the normal due date applies.

Mini-jobs: new limit and a new health insurance flat rate

Little changes for mini-jobs (Minijobs) paid at the minimum wage. The limit grows with the wage, so the number of hours a mini-jobber can work per month stays almost the same. If you plan hours right up to the limit, recalculate them anyway. Mini-jobbers paid above the minimum wage are the risk: if you raise their pay at the turn of the year, their monthly earnings can go above €633.

An unforeseeable overshoot does no harm in up to two calendar months within a rolling year, as long as each overshoot stays within the amount of the limit (Section 8(1b) SGB IV). A planned pay raise is not unforeseeable. For a way to check hours and hourly pay against the limit automatically, see the use case checking the mini-job limit.

What is new in 2027 is the health insurance flat rate for commercial mini-jobs. Until the end of 2026 it is 13 percent. From January 1, 2027, employers pay the general contribution rate plus the average additional contribution rate (durchschnittlicher Zusatzbeitragssatz), as set out in Section 249b sentence 1 of Social Code Book V as amended by the health insurance contribution stabilization act (GKV-Beitragssatzstabilisierungsgesetz) of July 24, 2026. The Federal Ministry of Health publishes the average rate for 2027 by November 1, 2026 (Section 242a(2) SGB V).

The pension insurance flat rate stays at 15 percent. Mini-jobs in private households keep their 5 percent health insurance rate, since the amendment only replaces the first sentence of the provision. All rates with their legal basis are listed under flat-rate levies for mini-jobs.

Working time accounts under Section 2(2) MiLoG

Hours worked beyond the contract may only go into a working time account agreed in writing. They have to be balanced within twelve calendar months of being recorded, either by paid time off or by paying the minimum wage for them. No more than 50 percent of the contractual working time per month may be credited to the account (Section 2(2) MiLoG).

These limits only apply where the regular salary does not already cover the minimum wage for all hours worked. A salary that covered every hour at the 2026 rate may fall short at the new rate. The twelve-month deadline and the 50 percent cap then apply to accounts that were never affected before. In December, check which accounts carry extra hours and plan how to balance them in time. When employment ends, open hours must be settled in the following month at the latest.

According to German Customs, the 50 percent cap only applies to extra hours, while negative hours can be credited without limit. Long-term accounts under the Social Code (Wertguthaben) are outside these rules (Section 2(3) MiLoG).

Time records for mini-jobs and certain industries

For mini-jobbers and for staff in the industries listed in Section 2a of the Act to Combat Undeclared Work (Schwarzarbeitsbekämpfungsgesetz), you record the start, end and duration of daily working time. Records are due by the end of the seventh calendar day after the working day and must be kept for at least two years (Section 17(1) MiLoG). For mini-jobbers the duty applies in every industry, and it covers short-term employees too, because both fall under Section 8(1) SGB IV. Mini-jobs in private households are exempt.

The listed industries include construction, hospitality, passenger transport, freight forwarding and logistics, building cleaning, the meat industry and hairdressing and cosmetics (Section 2a(1) SchwarzArbG). The duty does not apply to employees whose regular monthly pay exceeds EUR 4,461 gross, or EUR 2,974 if that pay has demonstrably been paid for the last twelve months (Section 1(1) of the Minimum Wage Documentation Ordinance, MiLoDokV). In an audit, these records show that every hour from January on was paid at the new rate.

Care work and apprentices: separate floors

In care businesses, the care sector minimum wage (Pflegemindestlohn) under the Seventh Care Work Conditions Ordinance applies. As an industry minimum wage it takes precedence as long as it does not fall below the general minimum wage (Section 1(3) MiLoG). Its next stage applies from July 1, 2027: €16.95 for care assistants, €18.26 for care workers with at least one year of training and €21.58 for registered nurses, each gross per hour.

Staff in administration, kitchens or building services of a care business only fall under it if at least 25 percent of their working time is spent on care or support (Section 1(3) and (4) of the ordinance). The rates per qualification with their history are on the page care sector minimum wage by qualification.

Apprentices are covered neither by the care sector minimum wage (Section 1(2) of the ordinance) nor by the Minimum Wage Act, which expressly leaves their pay unregulated (Section 22(3) MiLoG). They are entitled to the minimum training allowance (Mindestausbildungsvergütung) under Section 17 of the Vocational Training Act (BBiG), based on the year the training starts. For a start in 2026, the first-year minimum is €724 a month. The amounts for a 2027 start are published in the Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt) by November 1, 2026 at the latest (Section 17(2) BBiG).

Query the minimum wage for a reference date

$ curl "https://api.quellenkontor.dev/v1/hr/mindestlohn?datum=2027-01-15" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $QK_KEY"

# Excerpt of the response
{
  "datensatz": "mindestlohn",
  "datum": "2027-01-15",
  "minijob_grenze_monat": 633,
  "rechtsgrundlage": "Fünfte Mindestlohnanpassungsverordnung vom 5. November 2025 (BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 268), Stufe 2",
  "zitat": "Gesetzlicher Mindestlohn in Deutschland am 15.01.2027: 14,60 Euro brutto je Stunde, gültig ab 01.01.2027. Minijob-Grenze: 633 Euro im Monat. Rechtsgrundlage: Fünfte Mindestlohnanpassungsverordnung vom 5. November 2025, Stufe 2. Quelle: Fünfte Mindestlohnanpassungsverordnung vom 5. November 2025 (BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 268), https://www.recht.bund.de/bgbl/1/2025/268/VO.html. Daten: Quellenkontor (quellenkontor.dev)."
}

In your software: rate history instead of overwriting

Keep the minimum wage as a list of rates, each with a valid-from date. December payroll then uses the old rate and January payroll the new one, and nobody has to edit a value on January 1. The API carries adopted rates as soon as the weekly review has entered them after official publication and, for queries about today, shows the upcoming rate in the field naechster_wert.

Some changes are enacted before their amount is known, like the new health insurance rate for mini-jobs until the average additional contribution rate is published. The API marks such components as pending instead of passing on the old rate. The documentation on reference dates and future values shows what that looks like in a response.

How to model the change in payroll software

• Create the new rate as its own entry valid from January 1, 2027 and let the previous entry end the day before.
• Keep the mini-job limit and the lower limit of the transition zone as dated entries too, with the official notice as their source.
• For every payroll run, take the reference date from the pay period, not the date of the run.
• Before year-end, run a test payroll with a reference date in January and compare the result with the table above.
• Set up a webhook or a daily query so the next rate arrives without manual work.