Raising pay is a direct household issue. Since the start of this year, several provinces have lifted statutory minimum wages, some have sought views on adjustment plans, and others have raised enterprise wage-guidance lines. The open questions are who gains, what the changes mean for employers, and how livelihood protection can be strengthened further.
Minimum wages are being raised more quickly
From 1 September, Yunnan increased monthly minimum wages in its first, second and third regional categories from 2,170 yuan, 2,020 yuan and 1,870 yuan to 2,270 yuan, 2,120 yuan and 1,970 yuan. Each non-full-time hourly minimum rose by 1 yuan from the level before the adjustment.
Ma, who runs a housekeeping company in Kunming, said the firm already pays above the minimum wage. Even so, the annual increase affects hourly pay and keeps reminding employers to recalibrate pay standards and protect workers’ rights. Most domestic-service workers, he said, are grassroots employees in flexible jobs with relatively weak bargaining power. A higher minimum directly lifts their income floor and may also improve pay and basic benefits for temporary work, making frontline housekeeping jobs more secure.
Reporters for Xinhua Viewpoint found that, by the time of this account, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Yunnan and Xinjiang had raised minimum wages this year. The smallest increase was 100 yuan and the largest was more than 200 yuan. Sichuan and Guizhou published draft adjustments for public comment this year. After the changes, the top minimum-wage tier in every province, autonomous region and municipality nationwide exceeds 2,000 yuan.
Beyond that legal floor, enterprise wage-guidance lines are meant to steer how much firms raise pay in light of their own business. In August 2026, Shanxi set a provincial baseline of 7% for enterprise wage growth.
A staff member at Shanxi’s human resources and social security department said that in 2021 the province merged four minimum-wage tiers into three. After the latest adjustment in 2026, all three tiers are above 2,000 yuan.
Zhou Qingjie, a professor at the School of Economics at Beijing Technology and Business University, said the minimum wage is, in essence, a legal protection for lower-skilled workers. Raising it directly increases their pay, supports basic living standards and provides a livelihood floor. For companies, he said, it is a mandatory compliance line and can also reduce disorderly competition that relies on pushing wages down.
Who benefits, and how far the effects reach
The minimum wage is not only a pay line for lower-income workers. It is also a reference for other livelihood benefits.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security’s 2025 enterprise pay survey found that, among security, firefighting and auxiliary staff, wholesale and retail service workers, accommodation and catering staff, and residential-service workers, the lowest-paid 10% had average monthly wages close to the minimum-wage level. An increase therefore reaches many frontline workers directly.
It also moves other payments. Under the relevant rules, probationary wages must not be below the local minimum wage, and dispatched workers must be paid monthly by the labour-dispatch agency at the local minimum during periods without work. If disability allowances for grade-one to grade-four work injuries are below the local minimum, the work-injury insurance fund makes up the difference; for grades five and six, the employer makes up the difference.
The increases follow wider wage-policy requirements. The 2026 government work report called for an income-growth plan for urban and rural residents, practical measures to raise incomes among lower-income groups, more property income, and improvements to pay and social security, with residents’ income growth kept in step with economic growth. The plan for human resources and social security during the 15th Five-Year Plan period calls for a better wage-distribution system, stronger mechanisms for deciding and guiding enterprise pay, and a steady expansion of the middle-income group.
On whether firms will struggle to pay, Ma said most of his employees earn 3,000 to 6,000 yuan a month, so the new standard would not create short-term pressure to raise those wages. The company would use it to regularise temporary hiring and avoid non-compliant employment. Human resources authorities have also said that wage-guidance lines should be applied differently, with pay growth set according to profits and ability to pay, balancing a livelihood floor with business conditions.
Protecting workers beyond a higher wage
A pay increase is only one part of protecting workers’ rights. On top of existing measures, the question is how to improve the rules and enforce them so protection becomes more effective.
Authorities are building a more skills-based pay system, promoting collective consultation, expanding the pilot on occupational-injury protection for newer forms of work, and improving longer-term controls on wage arrears, with the aim of giving workers a clearer sense of gain.
The minimum wage is a statutory red line. Employers cannot meet it by counting overtime pay, night-shift allowances, meal subsidies or transport subsidies. Human resources and social security departments are expected to inspect employers and, where rules are broken, order labour compensation. Zhou said unions should use collective wage bargaining to strengthen workers’ negotiating power so income growth is more sustainable.
At the end of 2024, four former Beijing branches were reorganised into the Beijing company of China Construction Eighth Engineering Division, and internal labour relations had to be straightened out. Guided by the Fengtai District Federation of Trade Unions, seven employee representatives took more than 80 suggestions into several rounds of collective consultation. They and the company agreed a plan of a guaranteed general adjustment plus floating performance pay, so incomes would not fall during the integration. In early 2026, a first group of more than 500 employees received grade promotions; young core staff under 35 accounted for more than 70% of them. In the first half of this year, satisfaction with harmonious labour relations reached 96%, 20% higher than at the start of the integration.
Experts interviewed for the report said the size of minimum-wage increases should be kept in check so labour costs do not rise so far that they harm employment for lower-skilled workers.
Zhou said China’s adjustments have continued to balance efficiency and fairness, with each round kept within a reasonable range, and that ordinary adjustments do not produce large-scale replacement of jobs. Any change, he said, must take account of what firms can bear and balance a livelihood floor with employment protection.
Zhang Liyun, an associate professor at the China University of Labour Relations, said that besides a reasonable minimum-wage adjustment, subsidies for unavoidable spending on education and child-rearing could improve workers’ spending patterns and support consumption. Tailoring pay and social insurance to newer employment groups such as crowdsourced delivery riders and ride-hailing drivers, and building a more layered welfare system, would also, she said, provide lasting momentum for social development.
Original article: The Paper.
