Minimum wage, 24 months maximum. What to do in month 23

The Romanian Labour Code allows an employee to be kept on the national minimum gross wage for at most 24 months from the date the employment contract was concluded. After that the employer must grant a higher salary. It is an obligation with no filing deadline, no paperwork and no reminder — it surfaces during an inspection, months late.

1. What it says

Article 164 (8) of the Labour Code, as worded by Law 283/2024: the guaranteed national minimum gross wage "may be granted to an employee for a maximum period of 24 months from the date the individual employment contract was concluded".

Three things people read wrong: the clock runs from the contract date, not from the last national minimum-wage increase; the duty is to pay above the minimum, with no percentage prescribed; and it applies per employee, so two people hired three months apart have two different deadlines.

2. Part-time counts too

The statutory minimum is for full time. A four-hour contract legally has half of it — 2,162.50 lei from July 2026 against 4,325 for eight hours. Someone on four hours at 2,162.50 is on the minimum wage and falls under the rule. If you only look for the figure 4,325 in your payroll, half the affected people never show up.

3. Why month 23, not month 24

A raise is not a button. Between the decision and the effect sit an addendum signed by both parties, the filing in the national employee register no later than the day before it takes effect, and next month's payroll. Finding out in month 24 leaves you a choice between rushing and being in breach.

4. What a raise actually costs

With 2026 rates, moving one person from 4,325 to 4,600 lei gross takes the company's total cost from about 4,418 to 4,704 lei — 286 lei a month, 3,432 a year. Note that the 200-lei minimum-wage tax-free amount is lost once the base salary is above the minimum, so the employee's net rises by less than the gross suggests.

5. What does not count toward the 24 months

Periods when the contract was suspended — long unpaid leave, parental leave, technical unemployment — push the deadline out. Any software tracking this without the suspension history, ours included, computes the earliest possible deadline. That is the safe side: a warning a few weeks early costs a glance, a late one costs a fine.