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This page tracks the changes that alter what a Gulf salary is worth: labour law amendments, gratuity rules, minimum wages, visa categories and the tax measures that governments in the region have introduced. Since 2020 the pace has been unusual, with the UAE rewriting its labour law wholesale, Qatar removing the No-Objection Certificate and introducing a minimum wage, and Saudi Arabia loosening the rules on changing employer. Personal income tax on salaries still does not exist anywhere in the Gulf Cooperation Council, but corporate tax has arrived in the UAE, and each entry here says what changed and on which date. Older entries are kept rather than rewritten, so you can see when a rule changed and what applied before it.
The latest salary trends, labor law changes, and employment updates across the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
Why Gulf employment law changes so often
The six Gulf Cooperation Council states have rewritten large parts of their labour law since 2020, and they have done so for a common reason: each is trying to attract and keep skilled workers who can now choose between them. The UAE replaced a labour law that had stood since 1980. Qatar dismantled the No-Objection Certificate, the document that tied an employee to a single sponsor. Saudi Arabia introduced its Labour Reform Initiative, allowing job transfers without the employer's consent in defined circumstances. Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait have made narrower changes in the same direction. The result is that a rule an expatriate learned five years ago is often no longer the rule, and the difference usually matters in money.
What tends to change, and what does not
Three things move regularly. The first is the calculation of end-of-service benefits, where the UAE equalised the treatment of resignation and dismissal and the DIFC replaced gratuity entirely with the DEWS savings scheme. The second is mobility: notice periods, transfer rules and the conditions under which an employee may leave before the end of a fixed-term contract. The third is the visa framework, where new categories such as the UAE's Golden and Green visas have decoupled residence from a single employer.
One thing has not changed. None of the six states levies personal income tax on employment income, and none has announced an intention to. The tax measures that have arrived are corporate: value added tax at five per cent in most of the region, and a nine per cent corporate tax in the UAE on profits above AED 375,000. Neither touches a salary. Proposals for income tax surface in commentary from time to time, usually attached to a forecast about oil revenue, and we report them only when a government publishes something.
How to read an update on this page
Each entry names the instrument that changed, whether a decree-law, a ministerial resolution or an administrative circular, the date it took effect, and what it means for pay, notice or gratuity. Where a change is transitional, with one rule for existing contracts and another for new ones, the entry says so, because that distinction decides which rule applies to you. Where a figure is involved, it is given in the local currency, with an approximate euro equivalent for scale.
We keep older entries rather than overwriting them. An employee in a dispute often needs to know what the rule was at the time of signing, not what it is now, and a page that quietly updates itself cannot answer that. Each entry therefore carries its own date, and where a later change supersedes it, the entry says which one.
What an employee should watch for
Two dates decide most disputes: the date a contract was signed and the date a rule took effect. A transitional provision often leaves an existing contract under the old regime for a year or more, so an employee who reads only the current rule can reach the wrong conclusion about their own notice period or gratuity. The second thing to watch is the free zone. An employee in the DIFC or ADGM is not covered by the federal UAE labour law at all, and the DIFC has replaced end-of-service gratuity with monthly employer contributions to the DEWS scheme, which changes both the amount and the timing of what is owed.
Minimum wages are the newest instrument in the region. Qatar introduced one in 2021, covering basic pay plus allowances for food and accommodation, and it applies to all workers regardless of nationality. Saudi Arabia sets a threshold that determines whether a Saudi employee counts towards Saudization quotas rather than a universal floor, which is a different mechanism with a similar name. The UAE has no general minimum wage.
Where these updates come from
Primary sources first: the official gazettes, the labour ministries of each country, and the free zone authorities for the DIFC and ADGM, which have their own employment regimes. Where the text of a law is available only in Arabic, we work from the Arabic and say so. Recruitment platforms and consultancies publish useful salary data, and we cite them for market figures, but never for what the law requires. Nothing on this page is legal advice: a licensed adviser and the text of the instrument prevail over any summary here.