Colombia will reduce its maximum legal work week from 44 to 42 hours on July 15, 2026, completing the four-stage gradual reduction that Ley 2101 de 2021 established by modifying Article 161 of the Código Sustantivo del Trabajo (Colombia’s main labor code) and placing the country among the three Latin American nations with the shortest statutory work week. This milestone arrives alongside growing tension between the business sector and the government over labor costs.
The change means that from July 15 onward, no employer subject to a formal labor contract can legally require more than 42 hours per week from an employee under ordinary conditions, and any hours worked beyond that limit will generate overtime pay obligations; the law’s core guarantee, in place since Ley 2101 took effect, is that the reduction applies without any cut to salaries, benefits, or the per-hour wage value, which has made the measure both more politically feasible and more financially complex for businesses.
Four steps, five years: How Colombia got here
Ley 2101 de 2021 did not impose the 42-hour limit immediately; it established a gradual four-step path designed to give Colombian businesses time to absorb the adjustment, reducing the maximum by one hour per year starting July 2023 (to 47 hours), continuing in July 2024 (to 46 hours), then July 2025 (to 44 hours), and reaching the final target of 42 hours in July 2026, with the option for employers to adopt the reduction ahead of schedule at any point in that window.
The gradual structure acknowledged a mathematical reality that Ley 2101 itself could not eliminate: with the same annual salary now distributing across six fewer weekly hours than the 48-hour baseline, the effective cost per hour worked rises by approximately 14.3%; if a company responds by hiring additional staff to cover the lost production hours, total annual labor costs increase by approximately 13.9% according to legal and payroll analysis of the law, a figure the business community has cited consistently in its resistance to further reductions.
The 30-hour debate and the regional comparison
Colombia will enter the sub-44-hour tier alongside only two other Latin American nations: Ecuador, which has maintained a 40-hour week for decades, and Chile, which is completing its own gradual reduction to 40 hours under a law approved in 2023, while six other major regional economies, including Mexico, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia, still enforce a 48-hour legal maximum with no current reform on the table, making Colombia’s position a genuine regional outlier rather than a convergence with the broader Latin American norm.
Meanwhile, the Petro administration issued Decreto 223 de 2026 in April of this year, establishing a 30-hour maximum work week for a specific category of workers: students under 17 years old performing professional internships or monitorship programs in companies, whose work day must end no later than 6 PM; the decree does not apply to the general workforce, but it arrives at a moment when public statements from the administration have referenced a broader 30-hour proposal, prompting organized pushback from employer associations that point to recent accumulated labor cost increases as evidence that the market has not yet absorbed the 42-hour transition.
The trajectory of Colombia’s labor reform will reveal whether it bends to the short-term logic of political cost or the medium-term logic of productivity adjustment. With informal employment still exceeding 55% of the workforce according to DANE, every incremental rise in the formal labor cost differential risks driving more workers and employers outside the regulated system rather than toward fewer hours within it; the 42-hour milestone stands as a hard-won institutional achievement, but its true measure of success will be found not in the calendar date when the law takes full effect, but in DANE’s formal employment figures for the second half of 2026.