How much do garment workers in Bangladesh earn? (2026)

The legal minimum wage for a garment worker in Bangladesh is Tk 12,500 a month for the entry grade, rising to Tk 14,750 for the top grade. It was set by the Minimum Wage Board in November 2023 and took effect on 1 December 2023. Since December 2024 workers also receive a 9% annual increment. Independent living-wage estimates for Dhaka are more than twice the entry wage, and a new wage board is due by late 2026.

The legal minimum wage in 2026, grade by grade

The government published the gazette on 12 November 2023, as reported by The Daily Star. It cut the number of worker grades from seven to five and fixed a minimum gross wage for each. Every grade receives the same fixed allowances for medical care, transport and food; the grades differ in basic pay, and house rent is set at half of basic.

These are minimums, not typical pay. A skilled operator on a complex line is often paid above the floor for their grade, and overtime is paid on top. The table matters to a buyer for a different reason: it is the benchmark an auditor checks payslips against. A factory that pays an experienced sewing operator the entry-grade rate is underpaying, even if every worker receives at least Tk 12,500.

How the minimum wage has moved since 2006

Garment wages in Bangladesh do not rise every year by law. They are reset by a wage board, and each reset is a large step. The Business Standard, reporting the figures cited by the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council in September 2026, lists the history of the entry-level minimum:

The percentages are our arithmetic on those figures. The pattern is the useful part: the floor has risen by half or more at every reset, and each reset follows a period in which prices have risen and wages have not. A buyer who plans prices over several seasons should expect the next step, not assume the current rate is permanent.

The annual increment: 9% since December 2024

Between resets, workers receive an annual increment. The 2023 structure provided for 5% a year. After a tripartite meeting of government, owners and unions in December 2024, the government added 4 percentage points, bringing the annual increment to 9%. The Business Standard reported that the gazette was issued on 5 January 2025, effective from 1 December 2024, and that it stays in force until the government revises it or the Minimum Wage Board announces the next minimum wage.

In practice this means a worker who joined at the entry grade in 2023 is now paid more than Tk 12,500, and the gap between the legal floor and actual payroll grows each December. When you read a wage figure in an audit report, check which date it refers to and whether that year’s increment has been applied.

Wages inside the export processing zones

Factories inside Bangladesh’s export processing zones, run by the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA), follow a separate wage structure. BEPZA’s gazette of December 2023, reported by The Daily Star, set the minimum for a garment helper at Tk 12,800, up from Tk 8,200, with senior garment operators at Tk 15,200. The new rates applied from December 2023 and covered more than 480,000 workers in the zones. If the factory making your goods sits inside an EPZ, the auditor should be checking against the BEPZA structure, not the national one.

What Tk 12,500 buys

A wage is only meaningful against prices. Bangladesh has had persistent high inflation since the 2023 wage was set. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics figures reported by The Daily Star on 7 September 2026, inflation was 8.26% in August 2026, down from 8.32% in July, with food inflation at 7.02%. Prices that rise by about 8% a year erode a fixed wage quickly, which is why the 9% increment exists and why unions argue it is not enough.

Two simple conversions help a buyer picture the number. First, at the exchange rate the Global Living Wage Coalition uses in its 2025 Dhaka estimate (Tk 30,459 to US$248, about Tk 123 to the dollar), Tk 12,500 is roughly US$100 a month. Second, spread across the roughly 26 working days of a six-day week, it is about Tk 480 a day. Both are our arithmetic and exclude overtime, bonuses and increments.

The gap between the minimum and a living wage

A living wage is the income a worker needs for a basic but decent standard of living for a family, including food, housing, health care, education and a small margin for emergencies. The best-known estimates for Bangladesh come from the Anker methodology, published by the Global Living Wage Coalition.

The Dhaka estimate assumes a family of four with 1.58 earners, which is why it is higher than the cost of living for one person. Living-wage figures are estimates built from price surveys, not legal requirements, and brands use them in different ways. What the table shows plainly is that the legal minimum covers roughly half of what these estimates say a family needs, even before the next wage board meets.

For a buyer, the honest conclusion is that a legally compliant factory is not the same as a factory paying a living wage. Very few factories anywhere in the export garment trade pay the Anker benchmark to every worker. What a buyer controls is narrower: paying a price that allows the factory to pay at least the legal wage, every increment and all overtime, on time.

A new wage board is due in 2026

Under amendments to the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, the minimum wage must now be reviewed every three years instead of five. Because the current rate was announced in November 2023, the three years run out in November 2026. On 20 September 2026 the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council asked the government to reconstitute the wage board by 30 September and fix a new minimum by 30 November, effective from December 2026, as The Business Standard reported.

Whether the board meets that timetable is not yet known, and no new figure has been proposed in public. The practical effect for a brand placing orders now is that factory wage bills in Bangladesh are likely to step up again within the life of orders being quoted today. A careful buyer does three things:

• Asks the factory whether its quotation already allows for the December increment and a possible new minimum.
• Avoids fixing prices for a year or more without a clause that shares the cost of a legal wage change.
• Does not treat a price rise that follows a wage-board decision as bad faith. It is the law working as designed.

Labour is one input among several. The guide to what drives the cost of a garment shows how fabric, trims and overheads make up the rest of a price.

What a buyer can check

You cannot verify a factory’s payroll from an email. You can verify it through the evidence that already exists for most export factories:

• The factory’s name and address in writing. Wage checks mean nothing if the goods are made somewhere else. Insist on knowing the site before production.
• A recent social audit for that site. amfori BSCI, SMETA, WRAP and SA8000 auditors sample payslips, time records and grade assignments. Read the wage and hours findings, not only the overall rating. Our guide to which social audit your buyer will ask for explains what each covers.
• Grade assignment. Ask how many workers are paid at each grade. A factory where almost every operator sits at the entry grade deserves a question.
• Increments and bonuses. Check that the December increment was applied and that festival bonuses were paid before Eid. The labour ministry instructs factories to clear wages and festival allowances before each Eid holiday, and the press reports how many did not.
• Overtime records. Hours that look too tidy, such as the same total for every worker every week, are a warning sign that a second set of records exists.

Our compliance and audit service covers how audit reports are shared on an order, and our guide to quality and ethics in Bangladesh covers the wider picture of safety, environment and responsible sourcing without repeating the wage detail here.

What to do next

If you are planning production in Bangladesh, build the wage question into your supplier checks from the first conversation: ask for the factory’s name, its latest social audit, and how its price allows for the December increment and the coming wage board. CMB Sourcing places every order in an audited partner factory that is named in writing before production, and shares that factory’s audit reports with you. See how an order runs from enquiry to shipment, or send us your product details for a quotation that states which factory will make it.