The Bahamas minimum wage
The statutory minimum wage fixed under section 4 of the Minimum Wages Act (Ch. 321B, Act No. 1 of 2002). Section 4(2) empowers the Minister responsible for Labour to increase the sums by ORDER, after consultation with the representative employers' confederation and the association of registered trade unions; section 4(3) makes the order subject to affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament. There is no automatic indexation and no fixed review cycle — the rate has changed twice in twenty-four years.
| Current value | 260 BSD per week |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2023-01-01 |
| Official source | Bahamas National Statistical Institute — Labour Market Information Newsletter, Volume 35 No. 46, December 2022, Table 7 'Minimum Wage August 2015 And January, 2023': WEEKLY $260.00, DAILY $52.00, HOURLY $6.50, 'Effective January 2023', 'Based on eight (8) hours per day and forty (40) hours per week', *Source: Minimum Wages Act, 2002. Made by ministerial order under section 4(2) of the Minimum Wages Act (Ch. 321B) following the Prime Minister's announcement of 11 October 2022 |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
SERVE THE WEEKLY FIGURE. B$260 PER WEEK is the order figure. The daily ($52.00) and hourly ($6.50) figures that circulate are arithmetic derivations of it — BNSI's own table states them under the explicit rubric 'Based on eight (8) hours per day and forty (40) hours per week' ($260 / 5 = $52; $260 / 40 = $6.50). This is not a guess about how they were computed: the same pattern holds for the previous order ($210 weekly, $42 daily, $5.25 hourly, likewise footnoted 'Based on eight (8) hours per day and forty (40) hours per week'). Section 4(1) of the Act is drafted as three alternative bases — (a) if employed by the week, (b) if employed by the day, (c) if employed by the hour — so the daily and hourly amounts are legally operative FOR WORKERS ENGAGED ON THOSE BASES, but they are set by dividing the weekly figure on a 40-hour assumption and a worker on a 45-hour week is not entitled to $6.50 x 45. Anyone quoting '$6.50/hour' as THE Bahamian minimum wage is quoting a derived number. Bahamian dollar is at 1:1 par with USD, so B$260/week = US$260/week. RAISED FROM $210 TO $260 — the first increase since August 2015 and only the second since the Act commenced on 21 January 2002 (original section 4(1): $150/week, $30/day, $4/hour). Announced by Prime Minister Philip Davis on 11 October 2022; applied retroactively from July 2022 for public-sector employees and from January 2023 for the private sector. STILL UNCHANGED as at July 2026 — the National Tripartite Council has been reviewing minimum wage and a living wage, but no new order has been made, so any figure above $260 is a proposal, DO NOT SERVE AS FACT. ACCESS / SOURCING PROBLEM: the 2022 ministerial order is NOT retrievable from the official consolidation. laws.bahamas.gov.bs carries the Minimum Wages Act consolidated to LRO 1/2017 (https://laws.bahamas.gov.bs/cms/images/LEGISLATION/PRINCIPAL/2002/2002-0001/2002-0001.pdf), whose section 4(1) still reads 'two hundred and ten dollars per week', 'forty-two dollars per day', 'five dollars and twenty five cents per hour' with marginal notes citing S.I. 59/2015 — i.e. the consolidation predates the 2023 increase. A full-text search of the legislation portal for 'two hundred and sixty dollars' returns NO RESULTS, and no Minimum Wages amendment order appears in the subordinate-legislation index for 2022 or 2023 (S.I. 54/2022, sometimes surfaced by search engines against this query, is in fact the Health Services (COVID 19)(General)(Amendment)(No. 4) Rules, 2022 — a scanned, image-only PDF with no text layer). The value is therefore cited to the BNSI Labour Market Information Newsletter, which is an official Government of The Bahamas statistical publication that states the figure and names the Minimum Wages Act as its source. Re-verify against the S.I. if the gazette copy ever appears on the portal. Note the ILO NATLEX record and the Department of Labour both refer to the Act as CH.321B (some secondary sources say CH.320C — that chapter reference is wrong).
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2015-08-01 | 210 | Minimum Wages Act (Ch. 321B), section 4(1) as amended by S.I |
Get it programmatically
curl https://usaref.dev/v1/bs/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://usaref.dev/v1/bs/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://usaref.dev/provenance/bs/minimum-wageOther The Bahamas series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates