Offshore staff in Vietnam vs the Philippines is now a forecasting question rather than a price one. Vietnam lifted its regional minimum wage 7.2 percent on 1 January 2026, by one decree, on one date. Metro Manila lifted its floor 8.6 percent on 26 September, under the second wage order its board has issued in a quarter, with the first still frozen in court.
Nearly identical rises. Completely different levels of certainty.
A wage order is the instrument a Philippine regional board uses to set the daily minimum. It is regional rather than national, and it can be challenged in court. Founders with a Manila team have usually never read one, because the numbers sit far below what they pay a mid-level accountant. If you are deciding where the next five hires go, Outstaffer's country explorer is the map, and the wage-setting machinery is the part to read before the salary tables.
What the Philippines did on 26 September
The Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board for the National Capital Region approved Wage Order NCR-28 on a 4-3 vote, granting a PHP 60 daily increase in one tranche. The non-agricultural floor moves from PHP 695 to PHP 755 a day, and small retail and service employers from PHP 658 to PHP 718. The National Wages and Productivity Commission now lists both rates as the rates in force.
That is the second order in a quarter. The first, NCR-27, granted PHP 85 across two tranches and was blocked by court injunctions before a single peso reached anyone. The NWPC's own regional page still records it as awaiting resolution from two trial courts, and Philstar reported on 9 September that the labour department is challenging those injunctions while the Supreme Court weighs petitions to nullify them.
What does the increase cost per head?
PHP 60 a day, on a five-day week, is PHP 15,600 a year. Across a five-person Manila team sitting at the floor, that is PHP 78,000 a year. Most Australian employers will read those numbers and stop, because their people are nowhere near the floor, so NCR-28 costs them nothing directly.
Which is exactly the mistake.
The arithmetic that actually lands on your monthly payroll line
The cost is not the PHP 60. It is that a business budgeting Manila payroll has re-forecast that line twice since July and cannot rule out a third, because NCR-27 is alive in court and would stack on NCR-28. Set your FY27 salary band in July against a PHP 85 rise that never arrived, re-set it in September against a PHP 60 rise that did, and you have spent two finance cycles on a line you were told was settled. A planning problem, not a wage problem, and it sits in the same drawer as what a Manila hire really costs once statutory on-costs are counted.
Vietnam is not cheaper, it is scheduled
Vietnam's government reported a 7.2 percent lift across all four regions from 1 January 2026, taking Region 1 to VND 5.31 million a month. One decree, set nationally, announced in November for a January start, no litigation attached.
So should you move the team to Hanoi?
No. Chasing a wage-setting process with a working team is a bad trade, and switching costs eat the difference inside a quarter. Converting a Philippine contractor onto a real employment relationship fixes far more exposure and moves nobody.
The strongest case for staying exactly where you are
The Philippines has the deepest English-speaking professional services bench in the region, and certainty elsewhere does not change that for a client-facing accountant. A floor you already pay three times over is not a live risk. That argument is honest, and for one team of five it usually wins.
It stops winning at concentration. When every role sits in one city under one contested wage-setting process, you are carrying a bet nobody asked you to price.
Related reading
Keep the Manila team. Put the next two hires under a different wage calendar, and treat it as insurance rather than arbitrage. Foreign wage law is jurisdiction-specific, so take advice on your own arrangement first. If you want the second country priced properly, sign up and run one role through both.
So when you weigh Vietnam against the Philippines for your next offshore hire, are you pricing the wage, or the calendar?
More from
Global Hiring
category
%201.svg)
