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The latest minimum wages in Telangana, effective 01 April 2026, are fixed under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 and notified by the Labour Commissioner’s Office, Telangana, Hyderabad. Rates are paid as a basic wage plus a Variable Dearness Allowance across two zones. The striking feature of the Telangana schedule is that the VDA is far larger than the basic — more than twice the basic wage for unskilled work.
The short answer Under the notification effective 01 April 2025, minimum wages in Meghalaya are ₹541 per day for unskilled work, ₹583 for semi-skilled, ₹624 for skilled and ₹665 for highly skilled. Each figure is inclusive of VDA – ₹16, ₹18, ₹19 and ₹20 respectively. The rates apply to 29 categories of scheduled employment ranging from agriculture, construction and mining to tailoring, motor workshops, domestic work, public transport and security services, and the same figure applies whether the workplace is in Shillong or a rural block.
Meghalaya notifies a daily figure inclusive of VDA, so there is no allowance to add on. Convert to a monthly figure by multiplying the daily rate by 26 – unskilled work at ₹541 a day works out to ₹14,066 a month. Standard working hours are eight per day and 48 per week for all categories, including the hospitality sector. Overtime must be compensated at double the regular rate of wages.
The mistake to avoid: separating the VDA and paying only the basic. The notified ₹541 for unskilled work already includes ₹16 of VDA; the basic component on its own is ₹525. Some payroll systems import the basic column from a rate table and drop the allowance, which produces a shortfall on every worker every day.
Worked example – unskilled worker
Notified daily rate = ₹541 (basic ₹525 + VDA ₹16)
Per month = 541 × 26 = ₹14,066
Per year = 14,066 × 12 = ₹1,68,792
Per hour at an 8-hour day = 541 ÷ 8 = ₹67.63
One overtime hour = 67.63 × 2 = ₹135.25
The Meghalaya notification sets out its own definitions for each skill category rather than leaving them to be inferred. Classification follows the nature of the work performed, and the spread from unskilled to highly skilled is ₹124 a day – about 23 per cent – so getting the category wrong is materially expensive across a year.
Act on this: record the category against each worker in the wage register and review it when duties change. In hospitality and motor workshops especially, a role that starts as general help and drifts into electrical, plumbing or mechanical work has moved category, and the rate must move with it from the date the duties changed.
Minimum wages in Meghalaya apply across 29 categories of scheduled employment – agriculture, construction, mining, public transport, tailoring, motor workshops, domestic work, security services, hospitality and more. The notification confirms standard working hours of eight per day and 48 per week for all categories, and it applies to workers engaged through contractors on the same footing as directly employed staff. Coverage does not depend on headcount.
Paying below the notified Meghalaya labour rate exposes an employer to recovery of the shortfall for the whole affected period, compensation on top, and prosecution. Under the Code on Wages, 2019 a first offence attracts a fine of up to ₹50,000, and a repeat offence within five years can mean up to three months imprisonment and a fine of up to ₹1 lakh. Claims reach back three years.
Act on this: pay attention to the domestic work and hospitality schedules. Both are within the 29 notified categories, both are staffed informally in practice, and both are where an employer is most likely to assume the wage floor does not reach – it does.
The Labour Department, Government of Meghalaya fixes and revises minimum wages under Section 5(2) of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. The rates are stated inclusive of a Variable Dearness Allowance component, and the notification provides that wages are to be reviewed every six months through adjustments to the VDA based on movements in the Consumer Price Index. That review mechanism keeps increments inflation-linked without needing a fresh basic wage exercise each time.
Act on this: check the Labour Department portal at the start of each half-year rather than waiting for a circular to reach you. Meghalaya publishes revisions as departmental notifications rather than through the compliance press, so the update often lands quietly and an employer relying on secondary sources runs stale rates for months.
Notification history for minimum wages in Meghalaya.
| Effective From | Unskilled / Day | Skilled / Day | Highly Skilled / Day | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Apr 2025 | ₹541 | ₹624 | ₹665 | Notified under Sec 5(2), rates inclusive of VDA |
| Preceding revision | – | – | – | To be filled from the Labour Department archive |
| Half-yearly VDA review | – | – | – | CPI-linked adjustment mechanism |
Figures marked – are to be filled from the corresponding notification. A revision after 01 April 2025 may have been issued – reporting on this point is inconsistent, so verify the current position directly with the Labour Department, Government of Meghalaya before finalizing payroll.
Meghalaya notifies a comparatively high floor for the North East and does it in the simplest possible form – one daily figure per category, no zones, VDA already folded in. For a multi-state employer that simplicity is welcome, but it also means there is no lower rural rate to fall back on for establishments outside Shillong.
Unskilled minimum wage per day, compared with other states. Comparison figures are to be filled from each state’s own notification.
| State / Benchmark | Unskilled / Day | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Meghalaya | ₹541 | Single daily rate inclusive of ₹16 VDA, no zones, 29 scheduled employments |
| Goa – Zone A | ₹561.00 | Basic ₹412.00 + VDA ₹149.00 a day, two zones |
| Gujarat – Zone I | ₹512.50 | Basic ₹452.00 + VDA ₹60.50 a day |
| West Bengal – Zone A | ₹406 | Consolidated monthly rate ₹10,558, two zones |
| Assam | – | Basic + VDA by scheduled employment |
| National Floor Wage | – | Advisory floor, not directly enforceable on employers |
Act on this: if you operate across the North Eastern states, do not treat them as one wage region. Meghalaya’s unskilled floor sits well above West Bengal’s and close to Goa’s, and a shared north-eastern band set from a neighbouring state will breach here.
The table below sets out the Meghalaya labour rate by skill category, effective 01 April 2025. Daily rates are as notified and are inclusive of the VDA component shown. Monthly figures are the daily rate multiplied by 26; the same rates apply statewide.
| Skill Category | Basic / Day | VDA / Day | Total / Day | Per Month | Per Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unskilled | ₹525 | ₹16 | ₹541 | ₹14,066 | ₹1,68,792 |
| Semi-Skilled | ₹565 | ₹18 | ₹583 | ₹15,158 | ₹1,81,896 |
| Skilled | ₹605 | ₹19 | ₹624 | ₹16,224 | ₹1,94,688 |
| Highly Skilled | ₹645 | ₹20 | ₹665 | ₹17,290 | ₹2,07,480 |
Source: Labour Department, Government of Meghalaya – notification under Section 5(2) of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, effective 01 April 2025, applicable to 29 categories of scheduled employment. Basic components are derived by deducting the stated VDA from the notified total. Monthly figures are daily × 26.
No. Meghalaya notifies a single set of rates for the whole state, which is unusual and simplifies compliance considerably for employers with sites outside the capital.
Because Meghalaya has no wage zones, the daily rate is identical everywhere in the state. An unskilled worker earns ₹541 a day whether the workplace is a hotel in Shillong, a workshop in Tura, a shop in Jowai or a site in a rural block of the Khasi, Jaintia or Garo Hills. The same applies at every other category – skilled at ₹624 a day and highly skilled at ₹665. The only question that changes the rate is which of the four skill categories the worker falls in.
From 01 April 2026 to 30 September 2026, minimum wages in Telangana for shops and commercial establishments run from ₹13,108 a month or ₹504.15 a day for unskilled work in Zone I, up to ₹14,965 a month or ₹575.58 a day for a manager in Zone I. Zone II rates are ₹129 to ₹419 a month lower. Every figure includes a VDA of ₹9,408 a month.
The same as for directly employed staff. There is no separate lower schedule for contract workers — a contract peon in Zone I is entitled to ₹13,108 a month exactly as a directly employed peon is. Where the contractor pays less, the principal employer is liable for the shortfall, so build the notified rate plus PF and ESI into the contract price.
The Commissioner of Labour, Telangana notifies the cost of living allowance every six months, on 01 April and 01 October, based on the average rise in the state Industrial Workers Consumer Price Index. The basic rates come from the 2007 gazette order and change far less often.
Yes, and it is the larger part. For the period from 01 April 2026 the VDA is ₹9,408 a month, the same for every category and both zones. Unskilled work in Zone I is ₹3,700 basic plus ₹9,408 VDA. Building a salary structure off the basic column alone underpays by more than ₹9,000 a month per worker.
Zone I covers all Municipal Corporations in the state plus Selection Grade and Special Grade Municipalities — Greater Hyderabad, Warangal, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Ramagundam and Khammam among them. Zone II is the rest of the state. The zone follows the workplace, not the registered office.
No. The notified figure is the floor wage. HRA, conveyance and similar allowances sit outside the definition of wages under the Code on Wages, so they cannot be counted toward the minimum. A structure showing a small basic plus large allowances that totals the notified figure does not meet the floor.
Alpesh Vaghasiya (CEO)
Alpesh Vaghasiya is the Co-founder and CEO of Superworks, a smart business management solution that Indian SMBs and large enterprises use to run attendance, payroll, and statutory compliance from a single system. He has spent over 15 years building software out of Surat, founding Artoon Solutions, now a 350+ person product engineering firm serving clients across 30+ countries, in 2009, before launching Superworks in 2020.
His writing comes from the operator's side of compliance - what actually breaks when payroll has to absorb a minimum wage revision, reconcile attendance across multiple sites, or file returns under different state rules in the same month. A Charter Member of TiE Surat and an active angel investor in early-stage Indian startups, he holds a B.E. in Computer Engineering from Gujarat University.
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