Answer

13th month pay is a mandatory monetary benefit equal to at least one-twelfth of the basic salary an employee earned within a calendar year. It is required by Presidential Decree No. 851 and must be paid on or before 24 December each year.

All rank-and-file employees who have worked for at least one month during the calendar year are entitled to it, regardless of how they are paid or their position, as long as they are rank-and-file. Managerial employees are generally excluded. Our full report walks through the coverage and the common questions around it.

Researching Philippine law? Intellegal brings Philippine case-law search, statute and issuance exploration, multi-dimension case comparison, document visualization, and cited deep-research reports into a single workflow — with every citation traced back to its original source, so you can verify each answer rather than take it on trust. Every authority it surfaces links back to its original provision or decision, so you can open the source and confirm the wording yourself, and save or export the questions and reports you reference most. See the full report for the statutes and cases behind this answer, or explore the related questions below.

Sources & further reading

Related questions

Read the full report →
Research aid — not legal advice. Verify the current text against the Official Gazette. Provisions may have been amended or repealed. Using this page creates no attorney-client relationship. For legal advice, consult a Philippine lawyer.