Morocco's government just approved another increase to the legal minimum wage. If you employ staff in Morocco, whether directly or through an Employer of Record, your January payroll needs a new floor. If you are budgeting a hire for the first time, this number is where your offer letter starts, not where it ends.
As of January 1, 2026, Morocco's minimum wage (SMIG) for the non-agricultural private sector is 17.92 MAD per hour, or 3,422.72 MAD gross per month on the legal 191-hour basis. Take-home pay, after CNSS and AMO deductions, comes to roughly 3,191.85 MAD, under decree n° 2.25.983.
The new SMIG rate in Morocco for 2026
Decree n° 2.25.983, adopted by the Council of Government on December 18, 2025 and published in Official Bulletin n° 7469, sets the non-agricultural private-sector minimum wage at 17.92 MAD per hour starting January 1, 2026. That is a 5% increase, the second phase of the tripartite social agreement signed on April 29, 2024 between the government, the CGEM employers' federation, and the country's main trade unions. On the legal monthly base of 191 hours, gross SMIG now stands at 3,422.72 MAD, up from 3,259.72 MAD a year earlier when the hourly rate was 17.10 MAD.
This rate applies to every private-sector employee outside agriculture, regardless of contract type: fixed-term, permanent, temporary staffing, or an employee placed through an umbrella company (portage salarial). It does not apply to self-employed contractors, whose income depends on invoiced revenue, nor to civil servants, who follow a separate pay floor.
The number to remember: since January 1, 2026, Morocco's minimum wage is 17.92 MAD per hour, or 3,422.72 MAD gross per month, under decree n° 2.25.983 (source: Official Bulletin n° 7469, reported by Médias24).
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Hourly SMIG | 17.92 MAD |
| Legal monthly base | 191 hours |
| Gross monthly SMIG | 3,422.72 MAD |
| Employee CNSS contribution (4.48%) | approx. 153.30 MAD |
| Employee AMO contribution (2.26%) | approx. 77.34 MAD |
| Net monthly SMIG | approx. 3,191.85 MAD |
Gross vs net: how the deductions work
Here is where budgets go wrong. The headline figure, 17.92 MAD per hour, is a gross rate. To get the amount that actually lands in an employee's bank account, two employee-side contributions come off the gross: CNSS social security (4.48%, capped) and AMO health insurance (2.26%). On a gross SMIG of 3,422.72 MAD, that is roughly 153.30 MAD in CNSS and 77.34 MAD in AMO, for a net of about 3,191.85 MAD.
One detail employers often miss: this calculation excludes income tax (IR). At this pay level, the standard allowance and progressive tax brackets typically bring the tax due to zero. A worker paid the SMIG almost never owes income tax on that base salary.
For payroll planning: total employee-side deductions come to roughly 230.64 MAD on a gross SMIG of 3,422.72 MAD, leaving the net figure above (source: calculation based on current CNSS and AMO employee contribution rates).
SMAG 2026: the agricultural minimum wage
Agriculture runs on a separate clock. The SMAG (agricultural minimum wage) rises to 97.44 MAD per working day, but only from April 1, 2026. Between January and March, it stays at the 2025 rate of 93 MAD per day. Once the increase takes effect, that works out to roughly 2,533 to 2,539 MAD gross per month on a 26-working-day basis.
The gap between SMIG and SMAG net pay stays wide, around 790 MAD per month according to Moroccan business press calculations, close to a 26% difference. The government has floated a gradual convergence of the two minimums by 2028, though no firm timeline exists yet (source: Médias24, December 18, 2025).
How Morocco sets the minimum wage
The SMIG is not adjusted by unilateral decree out of nowhere. It comes out of tripartite social dialogue between the government, the CGEM on the employer side, and the country's leading trade unions. The April 29, 2024 agreement locked in a two-phase increase, 2025 then 2026, each formalized by its own decree. That mechanism produced decree n° 2.25.983 for 2026, following an earlier decree n° 2.24.1122 for 2025.
This explains why Morocco's minimum wage moves in predictable steps rather than tracking inflation continuously, unlike some neighboring markets. Talks covering the period beyond 2026 have not yet produced a new agreement as of this writing.
SMIG history in Morocco since 2021
Over five years, the SMIG has climbed 20%, from 14.81 to 17.92 MAD per hour. That is 3.11 MAD more per hour, equivalent to 594 MAD in extra gross pay per month. The SMAG rose a touch faster, up 25% since 2021. This trajectory reflects two successive social agreements: the one from April 30, 2022 (increases applied in September 2022 and September 2023), and the one from April 29, 2024 (increases in January 2025 and January 2026).
| Effective date | Hourly SMIG | Daily SMAG |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 (decree n° 2.19.422) | 14.81 MAD | 76.70 MAD |
| September 1, 2022 | 15.55 MAD | 84.37 MAD |
| September 1, 2023 | 16.29 MAD | 88.58 MAD |
| January 1, 2025 | 17.10 MAD | 93.00 MAD (from April 2025) |
| January 1, 2026 | 17.92 MAD | 97.44 MAD (from April 2026) |
What happens next is genuinely open. Nothing is locked in beyond 2026. Unions, led by the UMT, are pushing for a net SMIG between 4,500 and 5,000 MAD, well above the current 3,191.85 MAD (source: L'Essentiel de l'Éco, January 9, 2026).
Public sector: a different floor
Civil servants are not covered by the SMIG. They fall under a separate guaranteed net minimum, raised to 4,500 MAD in July 2025, up from 3,000 MAD. That is a 50% jump in a single year, well ahead of the private-sector increase. The two figures are not directly linked by calculation, but they show up together in the same public debate over purchasing power.
What this means if you hire freelancers or umbrella-company staff
The SMIG does not apply to self-employed contractors, and in theory it does not directly cap umbrella-company (portage salarial) pay either, since that depends on invoiced revenue. In practice, it is still a useful benchmark for judging whether independent work in Morocco pays.
| Profile | Estimated net monthly income |
|---|---|
| Private-sector employee at SMIG (191h) | approx. 3,192 MAD |
| Self-employed contractor, 8,000 MAD/month revenue (services, 20% tax) | approx. 6,400 MAD |
| Umbrella-company consultant, 1,000 MAD day rate, 15 days billed | approx. 11,000 to 12,000 MAD, depending on management fees |
A freelance developer billing a 1,000 MAD day rate and working fifteen days a month clears the SMIG net by a wide margin, even after umbrella-company management fees. Our Morocco umbrella company take-home pay simulation walks through the exact math by day rate. On the other end, a self-employed contractor with irregular revenue can, some months, earn less than the SMIG net. That is not an emergency, just a signal worth watching, since a self-employed worker does not contribute to CNSS the same way and lacks the same baseline protections.
Take a US-based startup hiring its first Morocco-based support engineer through an EOR. The role pays 12,000 MAD gross, comfortably above the SMIG, so the minimum wage itself is not the deciding factor. But the SMIG still shapes the smaller line items: statutory notice pay, any probation-period severance calculation, and the floor the EOR provider must legally respect if the contract is ever renegotiated downward. Skipping that check is a common rookie mistake for companies hiring in Morocco for the first time.
SMIG and hiring in Morocco: what foreign companies need to know
For a foreign company hiring in Morocco through an Employer of Record, the 2026 SMIG is a compliance floor, not a salary target. Most remote roles companies actually recruit for, developers, designers, customer support, pay well above this level, typically between 8,000 and 25,000 MAD gross depending on the role, as our average salary in Morocco breakdown shows. Still, the SMIG is the legal line you cannot cross downward without risking penalties and a CNSS audit.
It also feeds into calculations for notice periods and severance pay, and it matters when estimating the real cost of an EOR contract in Morocco, which layers employer-side CNSS and AMO contributions on top of gross salary. A company budgeting a hire at this pay level should factor in those employer contributions, typically 20 to 22% of gross, before comparing umbrella-company and EOR quotes side by side.
One thing worth flagging for distributed HR teams: Morocco's SMIG has nothing to do with the French SMIC, and the two should never get mixed up in a multi-country hiring budget. A French or European company opening a role in Morocco through an umbrella company or EOR applies Moroccan labor law, not French law, even if the employee works exclusively for a client based in Paris or Lyon.
Three numbers to keep on hand for 2026: 17.92 MAD gross per hour, roughly 3,192 MAD net per month, and a decree that is already published, leaving no room for interpretation on January payroll. If you are hiring or invoicing in Morocco, update your pay scales before the next payroll run, and check that your umbrella-company or EOR contracts already reflect this new floor.