Salary thresholds are formulas, not numbers

Every page about work visas prints a salary threshold as if it were a fact with a long shelf life. Almost none of them are. Behind six of the figures on this site sit six different mechanisms, and in four of them the amount changes without the rule changing, without an announcement, and without anything appearing on the page you would think to check.

We learned this the expensive way. One threshold on this site was correct when we published it and stopped being correct three months later, and we did not notice, because nothing happened. That is the normal behaviour of these numbers, not an accident.

This page is the map we wish had existed: what actually produces each figure, who publishes it, and on what date it moves.

The six mechanisms

Only two of the six publish a plain figure that stays put between announcements. The other four are machines that produce a figure, and the machine and its output live in different documents.

Germany: the number exists nowhere in immigration law

German law does not contain a Blue Card salary figure at all. It fixes a percentage of the annual contribution assessment ceiling for the state pension — 50% in general, 45.3% for shortage occupations and for anyone who graduated within the last three years.

The ceiling for 2026 is €101,400, which makes the thresholds €50,700 and €45,934.20 a year. Both are our arithmetic on a published input, not a quotation, and any page presenting them as fixed statutory figures will be wrong within twelve months — because the ceiling is reset every January and the thresholds move with it silently.

Spain: the trap is the date, not the number

Spain's order sets the bar at 1.4 times average gross annual earnings per worker, with a coefficient of 0.8 where a reduction applies. The order names no euro amount whatsoever.

The statistics institute published the 2024 average, €29,540.26, on 28 May 2026. The ministry republished the resulting thresholds in June: €41,356.36 in general, €33,085.09 reduced. The same figure applies to Spain's national highly qualified route, which has no reduced variant at all.

Here is the part that catches people, and it caught us. The order says a new threshold applies to applications filed from one month after the statistics are published. So there are three distinct dates in play — when the statistics appear, when the new bar takes effect, and when anyone gets round to updating a web page — and they are never the same date. An application filed inside that month is judged against the old figure.

Our own Spain page carried the previous figure, €39,269.92, for three months after it stopped being current. It was 1.4 times the 2023 average: right when published, quietly wrong afterwards. We say so on the page rather than editing it away, because the failure mode is the point.

Portugal: the formula is real and the number is not published at all

Portugal writes its threshold into law more honestly than most: 1.5 times the national average gross annual salary, or 1.2 times for shortage professions. The immigration agency states it in those words.

What no document states is which wage statistic that multiplier applies to. We read every act the agency itself lists as the legal basis. The last of them looked like the obvious home for a published amount — and it regulates something else entirely: the general means-of-subsistence requirement, expressed against the minimum wage, with shares of 100%, 50% and 30% per household member. The phrase for "EU Blue Card" does not appear in it, and could not: it predates the Blue Card in Portuguese law.

So the multiplier is in the law, and the statistic it multiplies has no publisher, no named series and no reference year in any cited act. That is why serious sources disagree: €15,960, €21,030 and calculations landing above €30,000 all circulate. They are not competing readings of one document. They are different wage statistics, each multiplied by 1.5.

Our Portugal page therefore carries the formula, the six-month contract requirement, the legal basis — and no euro amount, plus the advice to get the figure in writing from the employer or the agency before relying on it.

The United Kingdom: clearing the threshold can be irrelevant

The UK publishes £41,700 as the general Skilled Worker requirement, with £33,400 in limited circumstances. Both are real. Neither is the test.

The rule is that you must be paid whichever is higher: the threshold, or the going rate for your specific occupation code. An offer of £45,000 clears the headline number and can still be refused because the going rate for that occupation sits above it. Checking the threshold alone tells you almost nothing, and the going rates are revised on their own schedule.

The Netherlands and Ireland: the honest cases

Both publish a plain figure, revised on a stated cycle.

The Dutch immigration service publishes the year's amounts in a news item — €5,942 a month for applicants aged 30 and over in 2026, €4,357 for those under 30. The catch here is not the date but the definition: the threshold is measured against the payroll-tax wage, and the 8% holiday allowance Dutch employers pay on top is excluded. An offer of €5,900 a month plus holiday allowance pays out over €6,300 and still fails.

Ireland asks €40,904 a year for occupations on the critical skills list, €36,848 if you obtained the qualification in the twelve months before applying, and €68,911 for eligible occupations outside that list. The job offer must run at least two years.

How to check whether a threshold you found is still true

This is the practical residue, and it works for any country, including ones we do not cover.

• Find out whether the law fixes an amount or a formula. If it is a formula, the figure you are reading is somebody's arithmetic, and the only question that matters is when they last did it.
• Identify the input, then check the input's own publication calendar. A threshold defined against a statistical series changes when the series does, not when the law does. Watching immigration news for it is watching the wrong place.
• Look for the effective date separately. Spain's month-long lag between publication and application is invisible unless you read the order.
• Distrust a figure with no date attached — including ours. If a page will not tell you when it last checked, it cannot tell you whether it is right.
• An empty section on a government page is not evidence that no figure exists. We concluded that Spain's national route had no published threshold because the ministry's own page leaves the salary field blank. The number was in a two-page PDF from the same ministry, one click away under a heading about other information. That page is still blank today.
• Check whether the document you are searching is even about your question. Three separate attempts to find Portugal's figure failed because all three searched an act that was never going to contain it.

Why we publish this

Every figure on this site is checked against the authority that publishes it, on a date we show. That promise is worth exactly as much as our ability to notice when a figure moves — and this page exists because we discovered our own ability was not good enough. We now re-check these sources on a schedule rather than when something reminds us.

If you take one thing from this page: a salary threshold is not a fact you look up once. It is the output of a machine, and the useful question is not what the number is but when the machine last ran.