Kenya minimum wage

What this value means

Kenya's minimum wage is a ZONE x OCCUPATION matrix, not a single national figure. The General Order sets 15 occupation grades across THREE geographic zones: (1) Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret cities; (2) the former municipalities/town councils of Mavoko, Ruiru and Limuru; (3) 'all other areas'. The value shown is the FLOOR: a general labourer (cleaner, sweeper, gardener, children's ayah, house servant, day watchman, messenger) in 'all other areas' = KES 9,628.07/month (exclusive of housing allowance). The RANGE runs up to KES 40,724.23/month for the top grades (Cashier / heavy-commercial-vehicle driver, and Artisan Grade I) in the city zone. Agriculture is governed separately by the Regulation of Wages (Agricultural Industry) (Amendment) Order, 2026 (LN 96/2026, re-gazetted LN 109/2026): the lowest agricultural rate is an unskilled employee at KES 9,196.93/month (consolidated). Rates were announced by President Ruto on Labour Day (1 May 2026) — a 12% general and 15% agricultural rise — and are deemed effective 1 May 2026. NOTE ON SOURCE: the first gazetting (LN 95/2026, Gazette Supp. No. 128, 29 May 2026) mis-printed this floor as KES 9,268.07 (an apparent digit transposition — every other zone rose exactly 12%); LN 108/2026 (26 June 2026) re-gazetted the Order and prints KES 9,628.07, the corrected figure used here. Orders are typically revised each Labour Day; next review expected ~1 May 2027. ZONAL AND OCCUPATION FLOORS (added 2026-07-27): the General Order matrix (15 occupation grades x 3 zones) and the separate Agricultural Industry Order are now served as structured data and can be priced through /v1/answers/wage-check by passing the schedule key. OPERATIVE INSTRUMENT IS LEGAL NOTICE 108 OF 2026 (26 June 2026), which deleted and substituted the Schedule that Legal Notice 95 of 2026 had itself just substituted a month earlier. LN 108 is not a cosmetic reissue: it corrects the lowest cell from 9,268.07 to 9,628.07 (a digit transposition in LN 95), corrects a grade-2 hourly cell from an impossible 1,754.68 to 175.46, and changes the daily and hourly columns from housing-EXCLUSIVE to housing-INCLUSIVE. Anyone still serving LN 95 figures is serving withdrawn numbers. ONLY THE MONTHLY BASIS IS SERVED: within a single row the monthly figure EXCLUDES housing allowance while the daily and hourly figures INCLUDE it, so the three bases are not interconvertible even in principle and no hours-per-day or days-per-month convention may be applied across them. The daily and hourly cells are in the gazette cited above for a caller who needs them. Agricultural workers fall under Legal Notice 96 of 2026, a separate non-zonal instrument with consolidated wages.

Earlier values

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ke/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ke/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/ke/minimum-wage

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