Simple to read.
Explicit about the evidence.
Intelligence Hours measures the gross minimum-wage working time needed to pay the official USD monthly list price of an AI subscription. Lower hours mean greater affordability under this definition.
A common subscription price asks for very different amounts of work across economies. Expressing that price in hours makes the burden easier to compare: one month of paid AI access, measured against the wage floor that applies to a particular worker and place.
Intelligence Hours: Local Prices and the Labor Time Cost of Paid AI Access
Version 1.1 makes verified local checkout price divided by the applicable local wage the primary research measure. It separates matched-plan comparisons from the lowest verified paid-entry cost within a stated catalog, including qualifying lower-priced tiers. A common USD price remains a useful benchmark, but its geographic ranking is exactly the inverse of dollar-converted wages.
The author confirms that the initial manuscript completed peer review in private circulation. This revised public paper responds to later critical feedback. That history does not imply journal peer review, journal acceptance or independent replication of the original panel.
Evidence in this edition. A historical Claude Pro illustration pairs documented US and UK launch prices with three explicitly named wage references: US federal, Washington DC and UK age 23+. Tax coverage is unresolved, so these are posted-price ratios, not verified checkout observations. The Korean USD baseline is recalculated from official wage inputs and a frozen World Bank response. The original cross-country panel is excluded from the revised empirical conclusions because its raw data and estimation code were not supplied. Readers can recalculate the examples printed in the watermarked PDF. The retained data and code are not a public downloadable replication package.
How the paper and the current index differ
- Primary research measure
- Local checkout IH uses verified recurring local charges, mandatory taxes, a defined plan and the wage applicable to a stated jurisdiction and worker population. A complete global local-price panel is not yet available. Posted prices remain separately labeled.
- Current website
- The operational series remains a US list-price benchmark with dated reference FX. Rank 1 has the fewest hours among eligible verified observations. The paper revision does not imply that the calculator already uses local checkout prices. A capital observation is not a national average.
- Ranks and entry costs
- Small differences need sensitivity analysis, not a claim of meaningful national superiority. Adding cheaper plans to a common USD basket changes hours but cannot create local-price information. Lowest paid-entry cost requires verified local prices and catalog coverage.
Ahn, K. (2026). Intelligence Hours: Local prices and the labor time cost of paid AI access (Version 1.1) [Research paper]. INLEVEL9.
How the index is calculated.
Intelligence Hours = monthly USD price ÷ hourly wage in USD
The verified index uses this basis: US list price · before taxes · gross minimum wage. Reference exchange rates change over time; the USD pricing convention stays fixed. “Fixed USD” does not mean freezing a provider’s price forever.
The USD basket is a common reference price chosen for comparison. It does not mean that every customer pays the same amount worldwide. Providers can offer regional prices, different tiers, taxes and payment conditions. The index asks how much local work buys the same published US price, not what a visitor will see at checkout.
An index measured in hours.
An IHI of 2.5 means two hours and thirty minutes of work for one monthly subscription. The score retains this direct meaning; there is no arbitrary 100-point baseline. Rank 1 has the fewest required hours among verified capital observations. Ranks use unrounded values, and exactly equal values share a rank. Changes in coverage can change a rank even when a country's own work-time value has not changed.
The benchmark basket.
basket-v1 contains ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro and Google AI Pro, with equal weight in
a median. All three approved prices must be present. An absent price never turns a three-plan basket into
a two-plan basket.
Only regular monthly web subscriptions with a published official USD price qualify. Annual-payment equivalents, introductory discounts, trials, app-store prices, API usage and business plans are excluded. Taxes and local checkout prices are outside the headline measure. Other official consumer plans are available as individual comparisons.
The basket is a recognizable affordability benchmark, not a claim that the products offer identical capabilities. Changing its membership requires a new version and a published rationale. Past versions are preserved.
These named plans define the basket. They are not a guarantee of access to every provider's most capable model, every feature or unlimited usage. We use subscriptions because they are recognizable consumer purchases; a stable monthly price can still buy a changing service. Measuring the price of a fixed amount of model performance would require a separate quality-adjusted series.
Whose minimum wage?
Where a published wage is available but an hourly normalization or exact regional match still requires an assumption, the calculator shows an estimated reference with the amount, working-time divisor, scope and source dates beside the result. These values remain outside the verified ranking. An assumed 40-hour week is labeled explicitly; it is not silently presented as local law. National-floor references also identify higher regional or sectoral rates.
Upcoming plans can be selected as price scenarios. ChatGPT ProMAX currently uses a $500 monthly scenario, with its name, price and launch awaiting official verification. Scenarios are excluded from basket-v1, the all-paid-plans median, the highest verified price and recorded official price snapshots. API and CSV results preserve the scenario and wage-reference labels. They do not represent an available purchase offer.
The denominator is the general adult, unskilled, non-tipped statutory wage. Where occupation or employer coverage is essential, the population is stated alongside the observation. Special youth, apprentice and tipped rates are not a substitute for the general adult rate.
Countries open at the jurisdiction containing their capital. The label always includes that jurisdiction. A capital observation is not a national average or a population-weighted wage. Geography on the map is for visualization only.
For the United States, the scope is the higher general federal/state floor for FLSA-covered work, including geographic state wage zones. Municipal and county ordinances are not comprehensively covered. Canada uses provincial/territorial general rates; the federal industry-specific rate is separate. Japan uses the prefectural general rate.
Where the official wage is hourly, we use it directly. A daily, weekly or monthly rate needs an evidenced working-time conversion. We do not divide all monthly wages by a universal 174 hours. Paid rest, statutory bonuses and the annual number of wage payments must be documented before comparison.
A general national minimum can have limited coverage. For example, an Australian national rate applies to award- and agreement-free employees. Sectoral or collective rates must be labeled with their actual population.
The minimum wage is a legal benchmark, not the average price of human labor. It makes the comparison concrete for workers at the applicable wage floor, while leaving enforcement and actual earnings as separate questions. For a worker paid below that floor, the same subscription requires more hours. Establishing how common that situation is requires current earnings and compliance evidence, not the statutory rate alone.
Missing values mean different things.
- Estimated reference: a sourced wage with an explicitly stated conversion or scope limitation. Work time is shown, but it is not assigned a verified country rank.
- No general minimum: official evidence establishes that no general statutory floor applies. These observations are N/A and excluded from rankings.
- Awaiting verification: the applicable source, amount, geographic zone, population or hourly conversion is not yet established. This is unfinished research, not structural N/A.
- Collective reference: an explicitly identified agreement can provide context but is excluded from the statutory ranking.
- Unavailable price or FX: a required input is absent. Hours are
null, never zero.
Exchange rates and dates.
We use Frankfurter v2 reference rates based on central-bank and official institutional data. The quote is local currency per USD. The raw response and contributing providers are retained, including contributor dates. Blended reference rates may differ from bank, card or checkout rates.
A quote must have a reference date no later than the index date. On holidays we retain the most recent available reference. Prices are flagged stale after 7 days without verification; wages after 45 days; reference FX after 7 days. A collection failure leaves the last approved value intact with its original date.
Observations record collection, verification, approval and effective dates separately. A published future wage takes effect only from its effective date. Some official summary tables provide a reference date rather than the precise commencement of the underlying law; the evidence explicitly identifies that limitation.
History, corrections and editions.
Daily observations begin at the first verified publication. There is no synthetic back history. A correction creates a new observation and a new snapshot revision; the previous records and review trail remain available to editors. Dates are interpreted in UTC.
The public history returns the latest recorded revision for each actual observation date. The CSV and JSON expose methodology and basket versions, input values and source links. Formal monthly editions will be frozen manifests of snapshot IDs once coverage passes the release checklist, with annual editions for longer comparisons.
What the OECD data can tell us.
The OECD real minimum-wage series is valuable historical context. It uses constant-price wages. The current headline requires a current nominal wage to match a current nominal subscription price. Mixing a constant-price wage with today’s dollar price would create a misleading ratio.
Converting both the subscription price and the wage by the same purchasing-power factor cancels
that factor: (P / PPP) / (W / PPP) = P / W. It does not produce an independent “PPP
Intelligence Hours” measure. A future purchasing-power series would need a different, explicit
research question.
Median-wage, after-tax and performance-adjusted comparisons are possible future series, each needing its own population, reliable matched observations and versioned methodology. A published minimum-to-median wage ratio is not automatically a valid way to infer a current hourly median wage.
For a matched population and period, let the Kaitz ratio be minimum wage divided by median wage.
Then IH_median = Kaitz × IH_minimum. A median-wage comparison answers a different
question and may change country rankings. We do not infer a current hourly median from an older
national ratio or combine it with a regional minimum without a matching basis.
Research background and interpretation.
Why measure a price in working time?
Labor-time prices have a long history. Cox and Alm's Time Well Spent (1997) expresses the cost of goods in the work needed to buy them. Ashenfelter's Comparing Real Wage Rates (2012) compares what workers doing standardized jobs can purchase across countries. Intelligence Hours applies this measurement tradition to paid AI access. It fixes a subscription benchmark; it does not hold workers' jobs, skills or productivity constant. Read the time-price references.
What changes from the Big Mac comparison?
The Big Mac literature shows why a recognizable product need not be a clean currency yardstick: local wages, rent, traded ingredients and other inputs all contribute to its price. Parsley and Wei (2007), Pakko and Pollard (1996, 2003), and Clements, Lan and Seah (2012) examine those differences and the limits of purchasing power parity comparisons.
IH makes a different choice: the headline holds the published US subscription price common across countries and asks how much local work buys it. With a common price, the ranking is exactly the inverse of the ranking of dollar-converted hourly wages. The contribution is a readable unit and a reproducible comparison, rather than new information hidden in the ratio. This choice neither establishes a worldwide checkout price nor assumes that AI has no local costs. IH is not an estimate of currency overvaluation or undervaluation.
Unequal wages are context, not a causal result.
Samuelson's factor-price equalization results describe conditions under which trade can equalize factor prices. Research by Trefler and by Clemens, Montenegro and Pritchett documents the importance of productivity, place and barriers when interpreting wage differences. This literature helps frame the question behind IH. A comparison of statutory wage floors is not itself a test of factor-price equalization, or evidence that AI will make wages converge. Read the trade and wage references.
The denominator changes the question.
Minimum-wage IH describes a legal wage floor; median-wage IH would describe a different position in the earnings distribution. The Kaitz identity above connects the two only when their inputs match. Studies by Rani and colleagues and by Kanbur and Ronconi also show why legal coverage and enforcement matter. Neither a national average nor the midpoint of a regional wage range can silently replace the jurisdiction displayed in this index. Read the wage-measurement references.
Access costs and automation are different measurements.
The task-based work of Zeira and Acemoglu and Restrepo makes relative costs relevant to automation. But a subscription fee divided by a minimum wage does not measure the cost of completing the same task to the same standard. Productivity, usage limits, supervision, integration costs and the wage of the affected occupation all matter. Workplace productivity findings such as Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond's cannot be applied as a universal conversion from subscription hours into labor saved.
Historical arguments about high wages and labor-saving innovation also depend on whose wages are measured, as the Allen–Humphries debate illustrates. IH can inform a task-specific cost comparison once those additional inputs are known; it does not predict job losses or adoption from the subscription price alone. Read the automation references.
Regional prices, product tiers and capacity.
A cheaper plan may differ in model access, usage or features. Deneckere and McAfee's work on quality differentiation offers one possible interpretation, not proof of a provider's motive. OpenAI's January 2026 Go announcement, for example, specifies an $8 US price and localized prices in some markets. Netflix's ₹149 Indian offer is a Mobile tier. Neither is evidence that an identical service has one price worldwide.
Capacity constraints can affect prices and availability, as the peak-load pricing literature explains. A sales pause, however, is not an observed price increase, and an unannounced plan is not a price observation. A domestic compute strategy would also need its own cost and capability comparison: a long IH alone does not establish that producing AI locally would be cheaper. Read the pricing references and the national compute reference.
Reading changes over time.
For an unchanged basket, wage population and jurisdiction, the common-price measure has an exact logarithmic decomposition:
This separates subscription-price, exchange-rate and wage movements. Log changes add exactly; ordinary percentage changes do not. A carried-forward exchange rate gives a zero FX contribution by construction, not evidence that the currency was stable. Annual-average research panels also answer a different question from an observation on a particular date.
A future local-checkout measure would instead use IH_local = local price / local wage. If expressed relative to the US benchmark, let L = local price / (USD price × FX). Its decomposition needs an additional Δ ln(L) term for changes in local pricing, taxes and other included charges. Merely adding
a standard tax rate to a US price is a scenario, not a verified local checkout observation.
Affordability is one part of digital access.
Research on telecommunications affordability and the digital divide distinguishes the cost of access from skills, use and outcomes. Language also matters: Ahia and colleagues find differences in token costs and utility across languages in API services. That does not directly measure subscription prices, but it helps explain why equal spending need not buy equal practical value.
The Broadband Commission's 2025 target puts entry-level broadband below 2% of monthly GNI per capita in low- and middle-income countries. That target has its own service and income denominator. Applying 2% to AI subscriptions or minimum-wage income would be a new policy choice, not an existing international standard. We publish hours without imposing an affordability pass/fail threshold. Read the digital-access references.
Research extensions.
Historical panels, median-wage comparisons, local checkout prices and performance-adjusted measures can extend this work. Each needs an explicit population, time basis, product definition and record of missing or carried-forward inputs. An annual national wage series is not interchangeable with the current capital-jurisdiction observation. Replacing a market exchange rate with a PPP factor prices a hypothetical purchasing-power basket; it does not convert the same dollar subscription into its actual local cost.
Research hypotheses about tier launch order, labor substitution or national compute policy need evidence beyond the index. Research tables and exploratory estimates do not become live observations until their underlying price, wage and exchange-rate inputs have passed the same source review as other published values.
What this index does not measure.
This is not a measure of model intelligence, capability, employment displacement or human worth. Nor is it a complete measure of access: devices, connectivity, payment methods, language, local availability, free tiers and usage limits all matter. Service availability is shown separately and remains “not yet verified” when no approved source exists.
The “eight-hour day” is only a visual unit. The original total hours are always retained. Gross wages do not describe disposable income, actual earnings, compliance with wage laws or the hours a particular worker is offered.
Coverage and release status.
The catalog includes 38 OECD members plus India, China, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. Major administrative regions are enumerated in systems with regional rules. Subregional wage zones and occupation mappings require additional research before a complete release.
The catalog count is a working inventory, not a claim that every legal wage zone has already been identified. The first full release requires every in-scope jurisdiction and applicable wage zone to have an approved value or an evidenced structural N/A classification. The preview is intentionally excluded from search indexing.
Research references.
These selected readings explain the measurement tradition, economic context and limitations. The notes describe their relevance to IH; they do not imply that the authors studied this index or endorsed its conclusions. References use journal issue years, with an earlier online year noted where relevant. Current prices and wages are supported by the official data sources below.
Labor time, living standards and the Big Mac comparison (6)
- Cox, W. M., & Alm, R. (1997). Time Well Spent: The Declining Real Cost of Living in America. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Annual Report. Original source ↗
A precedent for expressing the cost of goods in working time. Its US time series does not establish international comparability.
- Ashenfelter, O. (2012). Comparing Real Wage Rates. American Economic Review, 102(2), 617–642. DOI ↗
Compares the purchasing power of workers doing standardized jobs. Intelligence Hours instead fixes a subscription benchmark and uses statutory wages with different coverage.
- Pakko, M. R., & Pollard, P. S. (1996). For Here or To Go? Purchasing Power Parity and the Big Mac. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, 78(1). DOI ↗
Explains why a familiar product can be a useful comparison without being a precise measure of currency misvaluation.
- Pakko, M. R., & Pollard, P. S. (2003). Burgernomics: A Big Mac Guide to Purchasing Power Parity. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, 85(6), 9–28. DOI ↗
Reviews non-traded inputs, trade barriers and other reasons for departures from purchasing power parity.
- Parsley, D. C., & Wei, S.-J. (2007). A Prism into the PPP Puzzles: The Micro-Foundations of Big Mac Real Exchange Rates. The Economic Journal, 117(523), 1336–1356. DOI ↗
Separates the contributions of traded and non-traded inputs to Big Mac price differences. This motivates an explicit common-price benchmark; it does not establish identical AI costs worldwide.
- Clements, K. W., Lan, Y., & Seah, S. P. (2012; online 2010). The Big Mac Index Two Decades On: An Evaluation of Burgernomics. International Journal of Finance & Economics, 17(1), 31–60. DOI ↗
Evaluates the information and biases in a single-product index. Simplicity still requires an explicit account of measurement limits.
International prices and unequal wages (5)
- Samuelson, P. A. (1948). International Trade and the Equalisation of Factor Prices. The Economic Journal, 58(230), 163–184. DOI ↗
The theoretical benchmark for factor-price equalization, conditional on assumptions about technology and trade.
- Samuelson, P. A. (1949). International Factor-Price Equalisation Once Again. The Economic Journal, 59(234), 181–197. DOI ↗
Refines the conditions for equalization. Differences between statutory minimum wages alone are not a test of those conditions.
- Trefler, D. (1993). International Factor Price Differences: Leontief Was Right! Journal of Political Economy, 101(6), 961–987. DOI ↗
Shows the importance of international productivity and factor-price differences in interpreting trade data.
- Clemens, M. A., Montenegro, C. E., & Pritchett, L. (2019). The Place Premium: Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers. Review of Economics and Statistics, 101(2), 201–213. DOI ↗
Estimates wage gaps across locations while addressing worker comparability and selection. These estimates should not be inferred from an IH ranking.
- Cavallo, A., Neiman, B., & Rigobón, R. (2014). Currency Unions, Product Introductions, and the Real Exchange Rate. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(2), 529–595. DOI ↗
Studies identical-product pricing across borders and currency areas. It does not establish that AI subscriptions have a universal checkout price.
Minimum wages, the Kaitz ratio and enforcement (4)
- OECD. Minimum Relative to Average Wages of Full-Time Workers. Earnings database, MIN2AVE. Original source ↗
The source for minimum-to-median earnings ratios. Period, population, wage definition and geographic basis must match before using a ratio to derive another measure.
- Rani, U., & Belser, P. (2012). Low Pay among Wage Earners and the Self-Employed in India. International Labour Review, 151(3), 221–242. DOI ↗
Documents low pay in India and motivates distinguishing legal wage floors from observed earnings.
- Rani, U., Belser, P., Oelz, M., & Ranjbar, S. (2013). Minimum Wage Coverage and Compliance in Developing Countries. International Labour Review, 152(3–4), 381–410. DOI ↗
Examines coverage and compliance. A statutory benchmark does not describe the wages of every covered or informal worker.
- Kanbur, R., & Ronconi, L. (2018). Enforcement Matters: The Effective Regulation of Labour. International Labour Review, 157(3), 331–356. DOI ↗
Distinguishes the law on the books from effective enforcement, a central limit of a minimum-wage denominator.
Automation, tasks and productivity (6)
- Zeira, J. (1998). Workers, Machines, and Economic Growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113(4), 1091–1117. DOI ↗
Connects technology adoption to relative production costs. Subscription prices alone do not identify task-level costs.
- Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2018). The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment. American Economic Review, 108(6), 1488–1542. DOI ↗
Models automation and new tasks jointly. IH measures neither displacement nor the creation of new work.
- Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2019). Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(2), 3–30. DOI ↗
Explains why task productivity and the allocation of work matter alongside factor prices when assessing automation.
- Allen, R. C. (2015; online 2014). The High Wage Economy and the Industrial Revolution: A Restatement. Economic History Review, 68(1), 1–22. DOI ↗
Presents the historical argument linking relative wages and energy costs to innovation; read alongside the critique below.
- Humphries, J. (2013; online 2012). The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective: A Critique of the High Wage Economy Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution. Economic History Review, 66(3), 693–714. DOI ↗
Shows why the workers represented by a wage series matter for an argument about labor costs and living standards.
- Brynjolfsson, E., Li, D., & Raymond, L. R. (2025). Generative AI at Work. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2), 889–942. DOI ↗
Studies productivity in a particular workplace setting. Its effects are not a universal multiplier for converting IH into labor saved.
Product tiers, capacity and observed prices (6)
- Deneckere, R. J., & McAfee, R. P. (1996). Damaged Goods. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 5(2), 149–174. DOI ↗
A theory of quality differentiation and price discrimination. It offers an interpretation of tiers, not evidence that a particular AI service was deliberately degraded.
- Steiner, P. O. (1957). Peak Loads and Efficient Pricing. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 71(4), 585–610. DOI ↗
Explains pricing under capacity constraints. A subscription price or sales pause alone does not measure the scarcity cost of compute.
- Levy, D., & Young, A. T. (2004). “The Real Thing”: Nominal Price Rigidity of the Nickel Coke, 1886–1959. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 36(4), 765–799. DOI ↗
A historical example of a stable nominal price. The mechanisms behind it are not automatically explanations of AI subscription pricing.
- Cavallo, A., & Rigobón, R. (2016). The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Measurement and Research. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(2), 151–178. DOI ↗
A methodological reference for collecting comparable posted prices if a local-checkout series is developed.
- OpenAI (16 January 2026). Introducing ChatGPT Go, Now Available Worldwide. Original source ↗
Documents a lower-priced tier, differences in access and usage, and localized pricing. The stated $8 monthly price is the US price.
- Netflix (14 December 2021). Netflix for All. Now at Happy New Prices. Original source ↗
Documents the ₹149 Mobile plan in India. It is an example of both tiering and local pricing, not an identical-product price comparison.
Affordability, digital access and compute (8)
- Hilbert, M. (2010). When Is Cheap, Cheap Enough to Bridge the Digital Divide? Modeling Income Related Structural Challenges of Technology Diffusion in Latin America. World Development, 38(5), 756–770. DOI ↗
Examines affordability and income distribution in technology diffusion. An identical nominal price need not imply comparable access.
- Humlum, A., & Vestergaard, E. (2025). The Unequal Adoption of ChatGPT Exacerbates Existing Inequalities among Workers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(1), e2414972121. DOI ↗
Documents differences in adoption among workers. Subscription affordability alone does not explain adoption or realized benefits.
- Stone, M. E. (2006). What Is Housing Affordability? The Case for the Residual Income Approach. Housing Policy Debate, 17(1), 151–184. DOI ↗
Provides a conceptual comparison for affordability measurement: a simple expenditure ratio does not account for all essential household costs.
- Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. 2025 Advocacy Target 2: Make Broadband Affordable. Original source ↗
Defines a broadband target below 2% of monthly GNI per capita in low- and middle-income countries. This is not an established AI or minimum-wage threshold.
- Barrantes, R., & Galperin, H. (2008). Can the Poor Afford Mobile Telephony? Evidence from Latin America. Telecommunications Policy, 32(8), 521–530. DOI ↗
A precedent for comparing a digital-service basket with income and poverty measures rather than relying on nominal prices alone.
- van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2006). Digital Divide Research, Achievements and Shortcomings. Poetics, 34(4–5), 221–235. DOI ↗
Distinguishes material access, skills and usage. A price-to-wage ratio covers only part of access to a digital service.
- Ahia, O., et al. (2023). Do All Languages Cost the Same? Tokenization in the Era of Commercial Language Models. EMNLP, 9904–9923. DOI ↗
Examines differences in API token costs and utility across languages. It motivates capability-sensitive research but is not a measure of subscription checkout costs.
- OECD (2023). A Blueprint for Building National Compute Capacity for Artificial Intelligence. OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 350. DOI ↗
Provides context on national compute capacity. A long IH does not by itself show that domestic infrastructure would be cheaper or more effective.
Official data sources.
Provider pricing and support pages establish prices. Government labor sources establish wage inputs; OECD and Eurostat can cross-check coverage and definitions. Unclear or blocked source pages become review items rather than automatically approved numbers.
- The National Minimum Wage in 2026
UK Low Pay Commission · wage - 2026 Minimum Wage
Republic of Korea Minimum Wage Commission · wage - National minimum wage — award and agreement free
Australia Fair Work Ombudsman · wage - Minimum wage rates and types
Employment New Zealand · wage - The minimum wage — questions and answers
German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs · wage - Le SMIC — gross statutory rate
French Ministry of Labour · wage - National Minimum Wage Order 2025 — effective January 2026
Irish Statute Book · wage - Minimum wage amounts
Government of the Netherlands · wage - Minimum wage statistics — July 2026
Eurostat · wage - Minimum wage — sectors and coverage
Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority · wage - Salary and collective wage agreements
Government of Iceland · wage - Does the Employment Act regulate the amount of salary?
Singapore Ministry of Manpower · wage - ChatGPT pricing
OpenAI · price - Claude pricing
Anthropic · price - Google AI plans — United States
Google · price - Grok pricing
xAI · price - Kimi membership — monthly billing
Moonshot AI · price - Frankfurter v2 reference exchange rates
Frankfurter / contributing official institutions · fx - Consolidated State Minimum Wage Table
U.S. Department of Labor · wage - Prefectural minimum wages and effective dates
Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare · wage - Current and forthcoming general minimum wages
Employment and Social Development Canada · wage - Minimum Wage Database — source data
Employment and Social Development Canada · wage - Minimum wages at current prices
OECD · methodology - Real minimum wages — constant-price context
OECD · methodology - Minimum wage in 2026
Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs · wage - Minimum wage rates and effective dates
Estonian Tax and Customs Board · wage - Key social indicators
Lithuanian State Social Insurance Fund Board · wage - Social minimum wage
Luxembourg Labour and Mines Inspectorate · wage - Minimum wage in 2026
Slovak Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family · wage - National Minimum Wage Amendment 2026, Gazette 54075
South Africa Department of Employment and Labour · wage - Decree 12,797 of December 23, 2025 — national minimum wage
Presidency of Brazil · wage - Government Decree 426/2025 — minimum wage for 2026
Hungarian National Legislation Database · wage - Minimum wage — April 2026, 182-hour basis
Israel National Insurance Institute · wage - Minimum Wages Order 2024 — rates, commencement and coverage
Malaysia Department of Labour Sabah · wage - Wage Committee Notification No. 14 — rates and eight-hour ordinary day
Thailand Ministry of Labour · wage - Current minimum wage notification register
Thailand Ministry of Labour · wage - Wage thresholds for counting Saudi employees in Nitaqat
Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development · wage - Labour Law — wages, Articles 89–95
Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development · wage - Minimum wages and wage protection in the Arab States
International Labour Organization · wage - Statutory Minimum Wage — May 2026
Hong Kong Labour Department · wage - Minimum Wage for Employees — January 2026 rates
Macao Labour Affairs Bureau · wage - Guaranteed monthly minimum wage for 2026
Portugal Directorate-General for Employment and Labour Relations · wage - Azores regional minimum wage — January 2026
Government of the Azores · wage - Madeira Legislative Decree 1/2026/M
Diário da República · wage - Labour Code — Article 271 hourly remuneration formula
Diário da República · wage - Working in Portugal — ordinary working hours
Government of Portugal · wage - Decree 293/2025/ND-CP — hourly minima and all 34 provincial wage-zone schedules
Government of Vietnam · wage - National Capital Region — current wage rates and effective dates
Philippines National Wages and Productivity Commission · wage - Wage Order NCR-28 — rates, coverage and eight-hour daily basis
Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board — NCR · wage - National minimum wage signed into law — NGN 70,000 per month
Nigeria State House · wage - Labour Act, section 13 — hours are agreed, not a universal hourly divisor
Nigeria National Electronic Labour Exchange · wage - Monthly minimum wages, national currency, 2026-S2
Eurostat · wage - Country-specific minimum-wage coverage and working-time definitions, July 2026
Eurostat · wage - January 2026 monthly minimum income
ChileAtiende · wage - Reduction to 42 weekly hours from April 26, 2026
Chile Labour Directorate · wage - 2026 minimum salary and working-time reduction
Fondo Colombia en Paz · wage - 2026 minimum wages by occupation
Costa Rica Ministry of Labour and Social Security · wage - Beijing minimum-wage notice, effective September 2025
Beijing Municipal Government · wage - Current minimum-wage orders
Delhi Labour Department · wage - Delhi unskilled daily and monthly wages, April 2025
Delhi Labour Department · wage - Jakarta provincial minimum wage 2026
Jakarta Provincial Government · wage - Minimum wages in the general and northern border areas, 2026
Mexico Official Gazette · wage - National, cantonal and collective minimum-wage coverage
Swiss Confederation · wage - Geneva gross hourly minimum wage, 2026
Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs · wage - Basel-Stadt minimum wage and supplements, 2026
Canton of Basel-Stadt · wage - Neuchatel minimum wage, 2026
Canton of Neuchatel · wage
Use the data.
JSON index and CSV export use the
same calculation engine. Query with country, region, plan and date. Historical dates require a recorded snapshot. History API example.
Suggested citation: Intelligence Hours Index, methodology 1.0, basket-v1, jurisdiction, observation date, revision or retrieval date, intelligence-hours.org. Always retain the basis and regional label when republishing a result.
Personal wage calculations use your gross hourly wage in USD and run in your browser. They do not change the published index and are not included in shared URLs, API responses or exports.
On a first visit, the host's approximate country code selects a country when it is in the catalog. Otherwise, the United States, South Korea or Japan is selected at random. An explicit link takes priority, followed by a valid previous selection saved in this browser. No precise location permission is requested.