Astana, 28 October. In his address to the nation, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instructed the government to raise the minimum wage from 85,000 to 110,000 tenge from 1 January 2027, an increase of 25,000 tenge or about 29%; according to the President, this will raise the incomes of 1.8 million people, including more than 370,000 workers paid from the budget, Akorda reported.
The minimum wage is the floor for pay: an employer must pay a full-time worker at least this amount, and its level is set each year by the law on the national budget. The current 85,000 tenge has applied since 1 January 2024, when it was raised from 70,000 tenge; the Labour Ministry then also put the number of beneficiaries at 1.8 million, including 350,000 public sector workers. Since then the minimum wage has not changed for three years. In 2025 Mazhilis deputies recommended exactly 110,000 tenge to the government, but Vice Minister of Finance Yerzhan Birzhanov replied that the draft budget had no money for it, and Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin said the issue would be considered in 2027–2028.
Alongside the minimum wage, the President ordered pay for primary care district staff to rise by up to 40% from the same date, depending on continuous length of service, covering more than 77,000 people. In the same address he proposed restructuring social policy so that state assistance reaches only those in genuine need and higher payments do not replace solutions to systemic problems.
For comparison, the average accrued wage in the second quarter of 2025 was 448,600 tenge, according to the Bureau of National Statistics. The new minimum wage will be roughly a quarter of that average. By 13:30 Astana time, the official channels of the government and the Labour Ministry had published no comment on how much the increase will cost the budget.
What it means: The address's most tangible measure for people concerns those on the minimum: their pay will rise by almost a third from January after three years without change. The President made it an instruction rather than a proposal for discussion, so the amount should appear in the 2027 budget law.
Who benefits: Workers on the minimum wage and low-paid public sector staff, who get a direct rise. For small business employers and the budget the rise adds to wage bills; the government has not yet published an estimate of the cost.
Background: With the rise to 85,000 tenge in 2024, the minimum wage doubled in three years, and the Labour Ministry then announced the goal of bringing it to 50% of the median wage by 2030.
We have also reported that the address directed 6.5 trillion tenge to "People's Construction" and raised the minimum wage to 110,000 tenge.
