In a relief to over one crore workers across 81 scheduled employments in Karnataka reeling under pressure of rising prices of essential commodities, the Karnataka government on Friday notified the final draft of minimum wages — ranging from ₹19,300 for an unskilled worker in Zone 3 to ₹31,100 for the highly skilled worker in Zone 1. The average increase of minimum wages is about 60% from the current wages.

The final notification on Friday comes over a year after the draft of the revised minimum wages for 81 scheduled employment in the State was notified on April 11, 2025. The variable dearness allowance for two years amounting to ₹1,030 has been incorporated into the minimum wages.

Confirming the notification, Labour Minister Santosh Lad told The Hindu that the new minimum wages would help a large workforce in the State.

“This is the workforce that would have very little left after paying for ESI and PF in the current minimum wage structure. They are also out of BPL limits,” he said.

Karnataka is the third State to notify revised minimum wages in the country in recent months after Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. While violence had broken out in Uttar Pradesh, widespread protests had been reported in Haryana over wages.

Three zones

The current revision is based on the calculation of expenditure of households as per the guidelines fixed by the Supreme Court in the Reptakos Brett case of 1991.

The State has been classified into three zones for calculation of minimum wages with Greater Bengaluru region coming under Zone 1. While Zone 2 is all other district centres, and rest of the regions have been classified under Zone 3.

The revision comes a decade after the last revision effected in 2016-2017. While trade unions had been pushing the government to notify the minimum wages, the industry and businesses were against the increase, citing the fear of flight of capital from the State and inability of industries, especially the MSME sector, to pay the revised wages.