What does an employee on the Algerian minimum wage cost in 2026?

The guaranteed national minimum wage has been 24,000 DA a month since 1 January 2026 (décret présidentiel n° 26-01). On a base equal to that salary alone, the 25 % employer share adds 6,000 DA, so 30,000 DA for the employer, and the 9 % employee share withholds 2,160 DA. This assumes a base limited to the basic salary: the actual base is set by ordonnance n° 95-01 and captures other elements of pay.

At what headcount does an internal regulation become compulsory in Algeria?

From 20 workers, the employer must draw up an internal regulation and submit it for opinion to the participation bodies or, failing that, to the workers' representatives (loi n° 90-11, article 75). Below that, article 76 makes it optional. It remains useful below the threshold, because article 73-2 makes the disciplinary dismissal procedure depend on that document.

How many days of paid leave does an employee accrue per month in Algeria?

2.5 days per month worked, with the total capped at 30 calendar days per year of work (loi n° 90-11, article 41). Any waiver by the worker of all or part of that leave is void (article 39). At least 10 additional days a year apply in the southern wilayas (article 42).

What overtime uplift applies in Algeria?

The uplift may in no case be lower than 50 % of the normal hourly wage (loi n° 90-11, article 32). That is a floor: a higher rate can only come from a collective agreement. Recourse to overtime must stay exceptional and may not exceed 20 % of the legal working time (article 31).

What notice period does Algerian law impose on dismissal?

No number of days. Article 73-5 of loi n° 90-11, added by loi n° 91-29, gives a worker who has not committed serious misconduct a right to notice and refers its minimum length to collective agreements. During that period the worker is entitled to two hours a day, cumulative and paid, to look for another job (article 73-6).

What severance does Algerian law provide for?

For a worker recruited for an indefinite duration, on individual or collective dismissal: 1 month per year of service, capped at 15 months, once the right to paid annual leave has been exhausted. The amount is computed on the most favourable monthly average of remuneration over the last three years of work (loi n° 90-11, article 72).

Does an Algerian employer pay social contributions monthly or quarterly?

It depends on headcount. Article 21 of loi n° 83-14 provides for a single payment within the first 15 days following the end of each calendar quarter if the employer has fewer than 10 workers, and within the first 15 days following the end of each month if the employer has more than nine. A first-time employer is therefore quarterly.

Is a salary at the Algerian minimum wage subject to income tax?

Article 104 of the direct tax code fully exempts from income tax any income not exceeding 30,000 dinars. The minimum wage is 24,000 dinars, so below that threshold. Above it, the withholding is computed on a monthly basis on the progressive scale, with a 40 % rebate on the tax, neither below 12,000 DA nor above 18,000 DA a year.

Hiring employees in Algeria, 2026: contracts, CNAS filings and payroll

Hiring your first employee in Algeria means three texts talking to each other: loi n° 90-11 for the contract, loi n° 83-14 for the social security filings, and the direct tax code for the payroll withholding. This guide gives the article behind each rule, and says what it does not say. A foreign company hires through an employer registered in Algeria, a subsidiary or a branch; the work permit an expatriate needs is a separate file, covered in the work permit guide linked below.

Content verified on August 22, 2026Our methodology

ByÉquipe UpGrowth, Algeria HR and labour law specialists

Published on January 15, 2026Updated on August 22, 2026

Compliant hiring and contracts, UpGrowth HR

Contract drafting, social security filings, onboarding

Compliant hiring and contracts, UpGrowth HR

The six acts of a first hire

Every line below names the text that creates it. None of these deadlines is an estimate: they are the deadlines the law imposes on the employer.

Establish the employment relationship. It comes into being through a written or unwritten contract, and exists by the mere fact of working on an employer's behalf (loi n° 90-11, article 8). With nothing in writing, it is presumed to be open ended (article 11).
File the activity declaration with the social security body, within the 10 days following the start of the activity (loi n° 83-14, article 6, as rewritten by loi n° 04-17).
File the employee's affiliation request, within the 10 days following recruitment (loi n° 83-14, article 10). These are two separate filings with two separate starting points.
Organise occupational medicine. The framework is loi n° 88-07 of 26 January 1988 on hygiene, safety and occupational medicine, still cited by 2026 texts. We publish neither a frequency nor the content of an examination here: we have not read the article that sets them.
Run payroll and withhold income tax at source on salaries, then remit it with the monthly return (article 104 of the direct tax code).
Pay social security contributions: within the first 15 days following the end of each calendar quarter below 10 workers, and of each month above nine (loi n° 83-14, article 21).

One point this page used to leave out: if your first employee is a foreign national, none of the above starts before they hold their work title. Article 21 of loi n° 90-11 allows the recruitment of foreign workers "under the conditions laid down by the legislation and regulations in force where there is no qualified national workforce", and those conditions live elsewhere: https://www.upgrowth.dz/permis-de-travail-etranger-algerie

A second point: affiliation depends neither on nationality, nor on the amount paid, nor even on the validity of the contract. Article 8 of loi n° 83-14 compulsorily affiliates "persons of whatever nationality who carry out in Algeria a salaried or assimilated activity, or who are in training, on whatever basis and in whatever place, for one or more employers, whatever the amount or nature of their remuneration and whatever the form, nature or validity of their contract or employment relationship". A verbal contract, a part time role, a trial period: all of them must be declared.

Contracts, as the law defines them

This section was rewritten. The previous version announced a two year cap renewable once for the fixed-term contract. That cap appears in none of the texts read.

A contract is deemed to be concluded for an indefinite duration unless otherwise stipulated in writing. Where there is no written contract, the employment relationship is presumed to be established for an indefinite duration (article 11).
A fixed-term contract is possible only in expressly listed cases: performance of work tied to non renewable works or service contracts; replacement of the holder of a post who is temporarily absent and whose post the employer must keep; periodic work of a discontinuous nature; a surge of work or seasonal grounds (article 12); activities or jobs of limited duration or temporary by nature (a fifth case added by ordonnance n° 96-21).
In all these cases the contract states the duration of the employment relationship and the grounds for the duration chosen (article 12).
The territorially competent labour inspector satisfies himself that the fixed-term contract is concluded for one of the cases in article 12 and that the duration provided for matches the activity the worker was recruited for (article 12 bis, added by ordonnance n° 96-21).
A fixed-term contract concluded in breach of the law is treated as an open-ended contract (article 14).
A part-time contract is an open-ended contract whose average hours fall below the legal working time. That volume may in no case be lower than half the legal working time (article 13).
The minimum recruitment age may in no case be lower than 16, except under an apprenticeship contract (article 15).

What the law does not say: no maximum duration for a fixed-term contract, and no number of renewals. What it does say is a closed list of grounds, a check by the labour inspectorate and automatic requalification where the law is breached. A page that gives you "two years, renewable once" is giving you a figure written nowhere in loi n° 90-11 as we read it, nor in its three amending texts of 1991, 1996 and 1997.

Working time, overtime and rest

Watch the trap in this area: article 22 of loi n° 90-11, still quoted by many templates, set the legal working week at 44 hours. It has been repealed since 1997.

Legal working week: 40 hours under normal working conditions, spread over at least 5 working days (ordonnance n° 97-03 of 11 January 1997, article 2). Its article 8 repeals articles 22 to 26 of loi n° 90-11.
Daily span of effective work: it may in no way exceed 12 hours (ordonnance n° 97-03, article 7).
Continuous shift: the employer must provide a break that may not exceed one hour, half an hour of which counts as working time (ordonnance n° 97-03, article 6).
Overtime: it must answer an absolute operational necessity and be exceptional, and may not exceed 20 % of the legal working time (loi n° 90-11, article 31).
Uplift: it may in no case be lower than 50 % of the normal hourly wage (article 32). That is a statutory floor, not a range: a higher rate comes from the collective agreement, never from the law.
Weekly rest: the worker is entitled to one full rest day a week, and the normal weekly rest day corresponding to ordinary working conditions is set on Friday (article 33).
Night work: any work performed between 9 pm and 5 am counts as night work (article 27).

The guaranteed national minimum wage is itself defined on that duration: décret présidentiel n° 26-01 sets it "corresponding to a legal working week of forty (40) hours, equivalent to 173.33 hours a month". The two figures hold together, and that is what makes the hourly rate derivable.

Pay, contributions and tax

The previous version of this page gave three contribution figures, two of which contradicted each other from one section to the next. Here is the decree table, and nothing else.

Guaranteed national minimum wage: 24,000 DA a month, an hourly rate of 138.46 dinars, for a 40 hour week equivalent to 173.33 hours a month. Décret présidentiel n° 26-01 of 7 January 2026, effective 1 January 2026, repealing décret présidentiel n° 21-137.
Social security contribution, total: 34.5 % of the contribution base, split into 25 % payable by the employer, 9 % payable by the employee and 0.5 % charged to the social works fund. Décret exécutif n° 94-187, article 2, as rewritten by décret exécutif n° 15-236.
Work accidents and occupational illness: 1.25 %, payable by the employer. It is a branch INSIDE the 25 %, not a supplement added on top.
Payroll income tax: withheld at source on a monthly basis, on the progressive scale in article 104 of the direct tax code, with a proportional 40 % rebate on the tax, neither below 12,000 DA a year nor above 18,000 DA a year.
Exemption: income not exceeding 30,000 dinars is fully exempt from income tax (article 104). A salary at the minimum wage, 24,000 dinars, sits below that threshold.

What an employee on the minimum wage costs, on a base equal to that salary alone: 24,000 DA of salary, plus the 25 % employer share, that is 6,000 DA, so 30,000 DA for the employer. On the employee side, 9 % is withheld at source, that is 2,160 DA. This calculation is not an invoice: the contribution base is set by ordonnance n° 95-01 of 21 January 1995 and the elements of pay it captures are not limited to the base salary. The full table, branch by branch, is at https://www.upgrowth.dz/cnas

The tax scale and its rebates come from article 104 of the direct tax code as rewritten by the 2022 finance act. We checked that the finance acts for 2023, 2025 and 2026 change neither the scale nor the salaries paragraph: both are carried forward unchanged.

Paid annual leave

Every worker is entitled to annual leave paid by the employer. Any waiver by the worker of all or part of that leave is void (article 39).
Paid leave accrues at 2.5 days per month worked, and the total may not exceed 30 CALENDAR days per year of work (article 41).
The reference period runs from 1 July of the year preceding the leave to 30 June of the leave year. For a newly recruited worker, the starting point is the recruitment date (article 40).
Any period equal to 24 working days or four weeks of work counts as one month of work when fixing the length of leave, and 180 working hours for seasonal or part-time workers (article 43).
Additional southern leave: it may not be lower than 10 days per year of work for a worker based in the southern wilayas (article 42, as rewritten by ordonnance n° 96-21).

A unit correction: the previous version wrote "2.5 working days a month = 30 days a year (about 5 weeks)". Article 41 says "two and a half days a month" and caps in CALENDAR days. The two units do not produce the same amount of rest, and the equivalence in weeks disappears with the unit that carried it.

At what headcount each obligation appears

This is the most useful correction on the page. It used to list the internal regulation among a first employer's obligations. It is not one yet, and that is precisely where the trap lies.

Internal regulation, from 20 workers: the employer is REQUIRED to draw one up and submit it for opinion to the participation bodies or, failing that, to the workers' representatives before it takes effect (article 75).
Below 20 workers, the employer MAY draw one up, according to the specific features of the activities (article 76).
Content: the employer compulsorily sets in it the rules on the technical organisation of work, hygiene, safety and discipline. On discipline, it sets the classification of professional faults, the corresponding levels of sanction and the procedures for applying them (article 77).
Filing: the internal regulation provided for in article 75 is filed with the territorially competent labour inspectorate for approval of conformity, within 8 days. It takes effect on filing with the territorially competent labour registry, and the employer must give it wide publicity among the workers concerned (article 79).
Clauses of the internal regulation that would remove or limit workers' rights as they follow from the laws, regulations and collective agreements in force are void (article 78).

The trap, in one sentence: article 73, as rewritten by loi n° 91-29, reserves disciplinary dismissal for serious misconduct, and article 73-2 requires that dismissal to be pronounced "in compliance with the procedures set by the internal regulation", which must provide for written notification of the decision and a hearing of the worker, who may be assisted by a worker of their choice. An employer with ten staff and no internal regulation therefore has no enforceable disciplinary procedure. Article 76 lets them write one: it is optional, and it is useful.

An employee may also ask for unpaid leave or a move to part time IN ORDER TO START A BUSINESS, once in their career, for a maximum of 12 months, exceptionally extendable by 6 months on evidence (loi n° 22-16 of 20 July 2022, articles 56 bis and 56 bis 1). On the employer side: you may, for operational necessity and after the opinion of the participation committee, defer the start date by up to 6 months if the absence risks having major adverse effects on the business (article 56 bis 2). The leave suspends the employment relationship (article 64, completed by the same act) and suspends pay, but the worker keeps social security cover.

Ending the employment relationship

The relationship ends through nullity or legal repeal of the contract, the expiry of a fixed-term contract, resignation, dismissal, total incapacity for work, redundancy, legal cessation of the employer's activity, retirement or death (article 66).
On termination, the worker is issued a certificat de travail stating the recruitment date, the termination date and the posts held with the corresponding periods (article 67).
Resignation: it is a right recognised to the worker, submitted in writing; the worker leaves the post after a notice period under the conditions set by collective agreements (article 68).
Severance: on individual or collective dismissal, a worker recruited for an indefinite duration is entitled to it, at 1 month per year of service capped at 15 months, once the right to paid annual leave has been exhausted. It is computed on the most favourable monthly average of remuneration over the last three years of work (article 72).
Any individual dismissal made in breach of the law is presumed abusive, and it is for the employer to prove otherwise (article 73-3, added by loi n° 91-29).
Notice: dismissal entitles a worker who has not committed serious misconduct to a notice period whose minimum length is set in collective agreements (article 73-5). During that period the worker is entitled to two hours a day, cumulative and paid, to look for another job (article 73-6).

One figure has deliberately disappeared from this page. It announced "15 days of minimum notice". Article 73-5 sets no number of days: it refers the minimum length to collective bargaining. We are not replacing that figure with another one. Check the collective agreement for your industry, and if there is none, have that checked.

The texts read, and what we do not say

Loi n° 90-11 of 21 April 1990 on employment relationships, Journal officiel n° 17 of 25 April 1990.
Loi n° 91-29 of 21 December 1991, Journal officiel n° 68 of 25 December 1991: it touches only article 73 and adds articles 73-1 to 73-6.
Ordonnance n° 96-21 of 9 July 1996, Journal officiel n° 43 of 10 July 1996: fifth fixed-term case, article 12 bis, additional southern leave.
Ordonnance n° 97-03 of 11 January 1997 setting the legal working time, Journal officiel n° 3 of 12 January 1997: 40 hours, and repeal of articles 22 to 26 of loi n° 90-11.
Loi n° 22-16 of 20 July 2022, Journal officiel n° 49 of 20 July 2022: leave and part-time work to start a business.
Loi n° 83-14 of 2 July 1983, Journal officiel n° 28 of 5 July 1983, and loi n° 04-17 of 10 November 2004 amending it, Journal officiel n° 72 of 13 November 2004.
Décret exécutif n° 94-187 of 6 July 1994, article 2, as rewritten by décret exécutif n° 15-236 of 3 September 2015, Journal officiel n° 49 of 16 September 2015. Décret exécutif n° 06-339 of 25 September 2006, Journal officiel n° 60, had already set the same three shares in its article 1, with effect from 1 October 2006.
Décret présidentiel n° 26-01 of 7 January 2026 setting the guaranteed national minimum wage, Journal officiel n° 01 of 8 January 2026.
Article 104 of the direct tax code, as rewritten by loi n° 21-16 of 30 December 2021, Journal officiel n° 100 of 30 December 2021.

The scope of the verification, said plainly. Issues of the Journal officiel earlier than 2002 are scans: they carry no text layer and cannot be swept automatically. The texts above were therefore read on the image rendering of their pages, one by one. We can state that across 2002 to 2026 a single text amends loi n° 90-11, loi n° 22-16. We cannot state that no other text amended it between 1998 and 2001.

What this page does not say, and why. It names no administrative form by its reference: the form quoted by the old version appears in no text in our corpus. It gives neither a frequency nor the content of a medical examination: the framework is loi n° 88-07, whose applicable article we have not read. It no longer lists the public professional insertion scheme among contract types: that is a state scheme, not a category of loi n° 90-11, and we have not verified its 2026 status. It does not copy out the social security penalty scale, which belongs to https://www.upgrowth.dz/penalites-cnas-employeur-algerie

Finally, it promises no administrative timeline and no administrative decision. The only deadlines you will read here are those a text imposes on the employer, and those UpGrowth commits to on its own service.

Free review of your employment contracts

34.5 % That is the total social security contribution set by décret n° 94-187 on the contribution base, 25 % of it payable by you. A first employee costs more than the salary, and a fixed-term contract with the wrong ground is paid for twice when it is requalified. Let us run the numbers with you.