Under Section 16 of the Code on Wages, 2019, the employer must fix the wage period for employees, which may be daily, weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, subject to the condition that no wage period in respect of any employee shall be more than:

Section 16 of the Code on Wages, 2019 requires the employer to fix the wage period for employees as either daily, weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, subject to the overriding condition that no wage period in respect of any employee shall exceed one month, with the proviso permitting different wage periods to be fixed for different establishments. This carries forward the identical restriction found in Section 4(2) of the erstwhile Payment of Wages Act, 1936. Once the wage period is fixed, Section 17 correspondingly prescribes the payment timeline linked to that period - for instance, wages under a monthly wage period must be paid before the expiry of the seventh day of the succeeding month - ensuring that employees receive their earnings within a reasonably short and legally certain interval after the work is performed, regardless of which permissible wage-period structure the employer adopts.