Fifteen employment rule changes in nine countries this autumn

Fifteen employment rule changes in nine countries this autumn

Between mid-September and 8 October 2026 our news coverage recorded fifteen separate changes to the rules for employing or engaging people, spread over nine countries: the United Kingdom (four), the United States (three), Indonesia (two), and one each in Austria, Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. They came to us as seventeen items, because India's provident fund ceiling and the UK's right-to-work checks were each reported twice from different angles. We count each change once.

By kind, the fifteen split into four on permits and visas, seven on checks and compliance duties, one on costs and fees, one on payroll contributions and two on incentives. Nine point towards a tighter regime for employers or workers, and six towards an easier one. Eleven of the fifteen carry a calendar date that an employer can put in a diary; the other four (the H-1B penalties bill, both Indonesian items and the UK apprenticeship payment) have no fixed day yet. The nearest dates ahead of us are 30 October 2026, when the UK harassment duty tightens, and 9 November, when comments on the US proposal for a student-work fee are reported to close. The furthest is 1 July 2028 in Singapore.

None of this is advice. What follows is a general reading of what our items say, written for firms that employ or contract people across borders, including those that use offshore developers or staff augmentation. It is not legal advice, and an employer with a live case should take advice from a qualified adviser in the country concerned.

The count, and the direction it points

The headline is that the tightening outweighs the easing, nine to six, but the split is uneven by country. The three American changes all point one way: the H-1B penalties bill, the proposed OPT school fee and California’s AI-at-work laws each add cost, scrutiny or duty. The UK is the only country with two changes in each direction. On the tighter side it has the extension of right-to-work checks and the Employment Rights Act dates; on the easier side it has a visa-fee reimbursement scheme and a payment for hiring young apprentices. Indonesia splits one each way.

The easier six are worth separating, because they are not the same kind of relief. Three open or speed up a route for people: South Korea's founder visa, Austria's single permit and Indonesia's plan for the investment ministry to issue work permits. Two pay employers money. One, Australia's reporting change, gives large employers a year's breathing space between target cycles. Only the first three bear directly on bringing a person into a job across a border.

Among the tighter nine, four are about duties that fall on the employer directly (UK checks, UK harassment, Singapore's certified HR professional and California's limits on automated decisions). Two are rules on cost that move towards the employer (India's contribution ceiling and the US fee, which the Department of Homeland Security expects schools might hand on). The remaining three are a penalties bill, a labour bill and a long-term residence test, which tighten the position of the foreign worker as much as the employer.

Three of the fifteen are not yet law. The H-1B penalties bill has five co-sponsors and, in our item's words, it has not passed. The OPT fee is a proposal with a comment period. Indonesia's labour bill has cleared the House but our source gave no effective date. Employers should treat those three as things to watch rather than things to comply with.

Permits and visas: who can start, and how quickly

Four of the fifteen change who may work and how fast they can start. Two ease the path and two close it.

Faster routes in Austria, Indonesia and South Korea

Austria has passed amendments to its residence and employment laws, published as Federal Law Gazette I No. 81/2026, that let single-permit holders change employer after 45 days. A worker on a combined work and residence permit may switch employer and purpose of stay, and may begin the new activity provisionally no later than 45 days after notifying the authorities, even while the new application is still open. The permit also survives six months of unemployment, where before only EU Blue Card holders had that protection, and most decisions are capped at 90 days from a complete application, extendable by 30 days for complex cases. Intracompany transferees and posted workers are excluded from some of this, and the rules for Blue Card holders are unchanged. The 7 August 2026 start date comes from a law firm's report as relayed by a trade outlet, and we could not open the Gazette text, so an employer should confirm it before relying on it.

For a firm hiring across borders, the practical gain is that a candidate already on a single permit can move faster. The condition is that the worker's right to start depends on having notified the authority, so a hiring plan needs that notification built in.

Indonesia is changing who issues the permit rather than the test for it. The investment ministry is to take over foreign-worker KITAS permits, with a six-day target from application to permit and, according to the minister, all of them issued by his ministry within two months. A joint decree dated 9 September links the online single-submission system to the manpower and immigration databases, and covers the worker-utilisation plan, the limited stay visa, the limited stay permit and the permanent stay permit. Our item rests on one news agency report of a minister's remarks, and the report does not say when the six-day clock starts or whether it includes the worker-plan approval. The government had earlier talked of five days. An employer planning an Indonesian hire should not build a schedule on six days until the ministry publishes its service standard.

South Korea has two routes open to founders who are not Korean nationals, and both close this year. The Startup Korea Special Visa recommendation window runs until 30 December 2026, and the SVC Seoul Global membership for foreign startups closes on 11 December. The visa is granted on the ministry's recommendation after a review, a presentation and a judging committee; the immigration decision itself is separate. This is a route for founders rather than for employees, but a company planning a Korean presence with a non-Korean founder is exactly the case it serves.

Slower routes: Japan and the United States

Japan has gone the other way. Its Immigration Services Agency revised the permanent-residency guidelines on 1 October, and the new income, pension and language tests apply mostly from April 2027. Applicants will be assessed on household income above the national average of about 5.75 million yen, expected pension benefits equal to 30 years of enrolment in the employees' pension system, and Japanese ability at an independent-user level. Spouses of Japanese nationals or permanent residents need five years of marriage and three years of residence, up from three and one. The income test reaches back to applications filed from April 2026, and a fast-track guideline ends on 31 March 2027. The criteria come from a Kyodo report, so the agency's own page should be read before advising an individual.

The consequence for an employer is time. Permanent residency frees a foreign employee from renewing a work visa and from being tied to one employer. Tighter rules mean longer on employer-sponsored status, which affects retention, HR administration and how attractive Japan looks to international talent.

The US change is a proposal, the Department of Homeland Security’s $70,000 school fee for each student’s first OPT, with $30,000 for each later recommendation, including STEM extensions. The fee would be owed by the school, not charged to the student or employer. The department says schools may pass it on to students, to all students or to employers. If the rule is finalised it would take effect 60 days after publication and would apply to recommendations dated on or after that day. Comments run 30 days after publication, which one law firm puts at 9 November, though other reports give 7 November. An employer that recruits graduates on OPT should watch whether its partner universities decide to recover the fee, and note that recommendations issued before the effective date fall outside it.

Checks and compliance duties that now reach further

Seven of the fifteen add or alter a duty. This is the largest group, and the one with the most dated obligations.

UK checks reach contractors and platforms

The most consequential of the seven for firms that engage people outside payroll is in the UK. From 1 October 2026 the Home Office's revised code makes right-to-work checks apply to worker contracts, sub-contractors and online platforms, and the employer's guide, which we cover in a second item on contractors and platform workers, says the same. Until then the duty applied to employees. Now it also covers people engaged under a worker's contract, individual sub-contractors and those found through an online matching service, which the code defines as a business that keeps a register of providers, matches them with clients and charges a fee or commission.

Liability can also run up the chain. A business supplying work to a third party that uses another employer to provide the workers, a platform whose provider contracts with a client, and an employer whose contract lets a worker send a substitute can all be treated as the employer. To keep a statutory excuse they must meet requirements on written contract terms, substitution controls and identity checks. For the new categories a penalty can be imposed only where the work began on or after 1 October 2026. The starting penalty is unchanged at £45,000 per worker, or £60,000 for a repeat within three years, reduced by £5,000 per worker for each mitigating factor.

Employers using a digital identity service must now pick a provider on the government's register with a note confirming it can do these checks, though using one remains optional. Our item advises staffing agencies and platforms to work out which of their contracts began on or after 1 October, since those carry the exposure.

UK employment law dates, and rules elsewhere

The other UK change is a set of dates. The Employment Rights Act timeline confirmed on 25 September lifts the tribunal claim limit from three months to six on 1 October, with a later start in Scotland for breach-of-contract claims on 9 November. On 30 October employers must take "all reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment of their employees, a higher bar than the current reasonable steps, alongside stronger union access rights. In January 2027 the unfair-dismissal qualifying period falls to six months and fire-and-rehire protections begin. The government says all future dates remain subject to parliamentary process.

Singapore's change has the longest runway. From 1 July 2028 organisations with more than 200 employees must have a certified HR professional at IHRP Certified Professional level or higher. An extra S$100 subsidy applies from 1 October 2026 to 30 June 2028, bringing the fee to S$163.50 for the first level, and each certification lasts three years. Regional headquarters of foreign companies are among those affected.

California's four workplace laws, signed on 30 September, bar disciplining or firing on the strength of AI alone, require disclosure when an AI system causes a mass layoff, and limit workplace surveillance. One law firm reads the first of them, SB 947, as starting on 1 July 2027 and reports civil penalties of up to $500 per violation under the two surveillance laws. The start dates of the other three have not been confirmed, and law firms disagree about whether the surveillance laws apply at once or from January 2027. The laws apply to any employer with staff in California, wherever it is based.

Two more fall here. The H-1B penalties bill would raise the maximum civil penalty for willful violations from $5,000 to $100,000, and from $35,000 to $250,000 where US workers are displaced, with minimum sponsorship bans of five and ten years. It has not passed. Indonesia’s House has passed a labour protection bill of 313 articles that takes labour rules out of the Job Creation Law and covers wages, layoffs and severance pay reserve funds. The report gives no effective date and none of the detail on the funds, so payroll teams with Indonesian staff will need the promulgated text before changing accruals.

Australia's gender-equality reporting change is the one item in this group that eases something. Commonwealth public-sector employers with 100 or more staff move to the same 1 April to 31 March reporting period as private employers from 2027 reporting, and employers with 500 or more staff get a 12-month gap between target cycles. The regulator says plainly that it is not a pause.

Costs and contributions that land on the employer

Two of the fifteen move money, and both move it in the employer's direction.

India has raised the wage ceiling for mandatory provident fund coverage from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 a month, from 17 September 2026. We have two items on it: one on the Gazette notification and the payroll work and one on the Cabinet decision and who is affected. The ceiling had stood since September 2014. Employees earning between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000 a month now fall inside the provident fund, pension and deposit-linked insurance schemes, and the government puts the number of newly covered employees at more than 51 lakh. Employers and employees each contribute 12% of wages, so on the capped wage the monthly figure moves from Rs 1,800 to Rs 3,000. Because the ceiling took effect on 17 September, the September payroll run is the first one to check, including staff who joined or received a raise during the month.

The sectors named in our item as likely to have many staff in that wage band include IT and business-process services, logistics, manufacturing and staffing firms. That matters directly to anyone who buys development capacity in India, a point we return to below.

The second cost is the American OPT fee already described. It is a school fee on paper, but the department's own text accepts that it could end up with employers. The cost is therefore uncertain rather than absent. Note also that Indonesia's severance reserve funds would be a cost to employers if the final rules require money to be set aside, though our source does not say.

Incentives while the windows are open

Two of the fifteen pay employers, and both are UK schemes with conditions that are easy to miss.

The Visa Fees Reimbursement Scheme for Scale Ups repays up to £5,000 per international hire and their dependants, and up to £25,000 a year per company, in digital and technologies, life sciences and clean energy. It opened on 9 June 2026 and closes at 11:59pm on 1 March 2027. The company must be a UK-based scale-up with average annualised growth above 20% over three years starting from at least 10 employees, hold a valid UK visa sponsor licence, and hire through the Skilled Worker, Global Talent or Scale-up routes. Our item notes that grant schemes can close early if the budget is used, so an eligible firm should not wait for the closing date.

The Apprenticeship Hiring Payment gives non-levy-paying employers £2,000 for each new apprentice aged 16 to 24, in two £1,000 instalments, at 90 days and at one year (242 days for foundation or shorter apprenticeships). The employer does not apply. The government pays the training provider, which must pass it on within 30 working days. The payment is lost if the apprentice started the job more than 90 days before beginning training, and an instalment is lost if the apprentice has left. Our item flags that the government's release does not say from which start date the payment applies.

Singapore's training subsidy is a small third incentive attached to a duty, as described above.

The dates, in order

For an employer's diary, the dated items fall like this. We list the ones still ahead as of 8 October 2026.

• 30 October 2026: the UK duty to take all reasonable steps against sexual harassment.
• 9 November 2026: the reported close of comments on the US OPT fee proposal (one law firm's date; others say 7 November), and the Scottish start for the longer breach-of-contract claim limit.
• 11 December 2026: South Korea's SVC Seoul Global membership closes.
• 30 December 2026: South Korea's Startup Korea Special Visa recommendation window closes.
• January 2027: the UK unfair-dismissal qualifying period falls to six months.
• 1 March 2027: the UK visa-fee scheme closes.
• 31 March 2027 and 1 April 2027: Japan's fast-track guideline ends and most of its new residency criteria begin; Australian reporting moves to the new period from 2027 reporting.
• 1 July 2027: California's SB 947, on one law firm's reading.
• 1 July 2028: Singapore's certified HR professional requirement.

Already past or operating by 8 October are the Indian ceiling (17 September), the UK right-to-work extension and tribunal limit (1 October), Austria's amendments (reported from 7 August) and the UK visa-fee scheme (open since 9 June).

What this means for firms using offshore developers and staff augmentation

Most of the fifteen concern the employer's own payroll or its own country, and a buyer of offshore capacity might think it is somebody else's problem. Four points suggest otherwise, each of them general rather than legal.

First, India. Many staff-augmentation vendors employ their engineers in India, and the ceiling change is a cost that lands on the vendor first, then on whatever it charges. Our item says foreign companies with Indian subsidiaries or employer-of-record arrangements should check with their providers. If you buy capacity there, ask the vendor whether the newly covered band affects the rate and from which invoice. For background on how we compare providers, see our guide to staff augmentation in India and our wider offshore staff-augmentation buyers’ guide.

Second, Pakistan. None of the fifteen changes concerns Pakistan, so nothing in this piece alters what our Pakistan staff-augmentation guide says on the facts we hold. Absence from a count of ours is not evidence that nothing changed, only that our coverage has not recorded it.

Third, the UK check. If you engage individual contractors or use a platform to find them for work in the UK, the extension applies to engagements that began on or after 1 October. Whether it reaches a contractor who works wholly from abroad is not something our items say, so it is a question to put to an adviser before assuming either way.

Fourth, residence rules decide how long a person you hire abroad is tied to you. Japan's tighter test and Austria's easier one pull in opposite directions on that, and if your model is to move offshore engineers onshore for a time, those are the rules that govern the move.

How we counted

This count covers items published on our news and HR news desks up to 8 October 2026. We kept those about the rules for employing or engaging people: work permits and visas, right-to-work checks, immigration costs, payroll and social-security contributions, employment-law duties and hiring incentives. We left out items on software security, product changes and tax filing, including a Pakistani income-tax return deadline. Seventeen items remained, covering fifteen changes. Each change was assigned one kind and one direction by us, using the main effect described in the item; a change with two effects, such as Singapore's duty and its subsidy, is counted once under its main effect. A date counts if our item gives a calendar date for an obligation or a deadline, including dates reported by a single law firm. Several items carry a note that a date or detail has not yet been confirmed against the official text, and where this article relies on one it says so.

Points an employer could not guess

Some of what these items say is not what a reader would assume from the headlines.

• UK right-to-work checks now reach people who are not employees. A hirer that thinks of its contractors as outside payroll, and so outside the check, is now inside it for any engagement that began on or after 1 October.
• A firm can be liable for the workers of someone further down its supply chain, and the way to keep a statutory excuse is in the contract wording, not in the check itself.
• The UK harassment duty applies to preventing harassment of employees and has moved from taking reasonable steps to taking all reasonable steps. That is a change of standard on 30 October, not a new obligation.
• The India change is not a rise in anyone's percentage. The contribution rate stays at 12%, and the cost moves because more people are inside the ceiling. On the capped wage the monthly figure goes from Rs 1,800 to Rs 3,000.
• The US OPT fee is owed by schools, yet the department itself expects some to pass it to employers. An employer's exposure may depend on a university's policy rather than on its own hiring.
• Austria's right to start with a new employer depends on having notified the authority. Starting earlier on a hunch would forfeit the protection.
• Two of the UK incentives need no action to claim in one case and quick action in the other: the apprenticeship money arrives through the training provider, while the visa-fee money needs an application and may run out before 1 March 2027.
• Three of the fifteen are not law yet, so the sensible response to them is to plan, not to comply.

Related on TrustList:

• Austria lets single-permit holders change employer after 45 days
• India raises the EPFO wage ceiling to Rs 25,000 a month: employees earning Rs 15,000–25,000 now come under mandatory PF
• House bill would lift H-1B penalties to $250,000 and a 10-year ban