Colombia and Mexico cut the workweek: what changes for a company with teams in both countries

A company running payroll in Colombia and in Mexico is not dealing with one labor reform. It is dealing with two, on different calendars, under different rules, moving at different speeds. Budgeting 2027 without separating them means copying a divisor or a cutoff date from one country into the other, and the error shows up in the first payroll run of the year.

At Soulbit Academy we already covered Colombia's hourly rate and overtime under the 42-hour workweek, and the full detail of Mexico's reform lives in the guide to Mexico's 40-hour workweek. This article lines up both calendars for a finance team running payroll in both countries: when they converge, what to check before closing the 2027 budget, and what Soulbit does today for that payroll.

Latin America workweek reduction: Colombia and Mexico, 2026-2030

In 2027, Colombia operates at a maximum of 42 weekly hours and Mexico at 46, a four-hour gap that closes completely in 2029 and reverses in 2030. Colombia finished its reduction calendar on July 15, 2026. Mexico only starts its own on January 1, 2027.

Table 1 shows the maximum weekly workweek in force in each country, year by year, from 2026 to 2030.

Year	Colombia (maximum workweek)	Mexico (maximum workweek)	Gap
2026	42 hours (from July 15)	48 hours (until December 31)	6 hours
2027	42 hours	46 hours	4 hours
2028	42 hours	44 hours	2 hours
2029	42 hours	42 hours	0 hours
2030	42 hours	40 hours	-2 hours (Mexico falls below Colombia)

Colombia's column does not move after 2026 because Law 2101 of 2021 set 42 hours as the final step. Mexico's column changes every year, because its reform is only getting started.

What each reform says: Colombia's Law 2101 and Mexico's 2026 reform

Colombia's maximum workweek fell from 48 to 42 hours in four steps between 2023 and 2026, with no salary cuts allowed. Law 2101 set that calendar, and Law 2466 of 2025 confirmed the 42 hours and also adjusted night and Sunday surcharges, a separate matter covered in Colombia's night and Sunday surcharge guide.

Mexico's maximum workweek drops from 48 to 40 hours in four steps between 2027 and 2030, two hours every January 1. The reform was published in Mexico's Diario Oficial de la Federación on May 1, 2026, and Mexico's Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social confirms the calendar: 48 hours in 2026, 46 in 2027, 44 in 2028, 42 in 2029 and 40 in 2030. A transitory article of the reform bars cutting salary or benefits because of the shorter workweek, the same protection already in place in Colombia.

Both reforms share that principle, and differ in everything else: the agency enforcing them, the method for recalculating the hourly rate, and the calendar itself. The full detail of the Mexican calculation, with daytime, mixed and night shifts under the Federal Labor Law, is in the guide to Mexico's payroll under the 40-hour workweek.

Why a gap between the two countries persists through 2029

Why is there still a four-hour gap in 2027, if both reforms aim at the same thing?

Because they started at different times and move at different speeds. Colombia began cutting hours in 2023 and finished in 2026. Mexico begins cutting hours in 2027. The widest gap already happened, in 2026, at six hours; in 2027 it narrows to four and keeps closing every year until it disappears in 2029.

The figure that most surprises a finance team used to treating Colombia as the faster mover is the one for 2030. That year Mexico drops to 40 hours and ends up two hours below Colombia, because Colombian law did not schedule any step past 42. A team planning shift and payroll infrastructure around Colombia as the permanent reference point for both countries will need to revisit that assumption before 2030.

The budgeting risk: applying one country's method to the other

What happens if finance uses Colombia's divisor to calculate Mexican payroll?

The hourly rate comes out wrong either way. Colombia's 210-hour monthly divisor comes from dividing 42 by 6 and multiplying by 30, a method that has no place under Mexico's Federal Labor Law, with its own split between daytime, night and mixed shifts and its own surcharges. Copying a divisor across borders is not a shortcut. It is a calculation error with a direct hit on every payroll run.

The same risk runs the other way if a Mexican parent company tries to apply its reduction calendar to the Colombian operation. Colombia already finished its calendar in July 2026; treating 2027, 2028 or 2029 as new reduction years for Colombia is simply wrong, because no step is pending there.

The date also separates the two countries. Colombia's change took effect on July 15, 2026, mid-year. Mexico's takes effect on January 1 of each year. A budget that assumes the same cutoff date for both countries drags a full quarter of error into one of them.

Payroll budget 2027 for a company with teams in Colombia and Mexico

Take a hypothetical company with 30 employees in Mexico and 12 in Colombia, figures used only for illustration and not data from a real company. For 2027, Colombia's budget line brings no workweek change versus what has been in force since July 2026: if the 210-hour divisor and surcharges were already adjusted, the Colombia line projects the same as the 2026 close, aside from the usual salary increases. Mexico's budget line brings a real change: it is the first year with a reduced workweek, from 48 to 46 hours, and the Mexican payroll team has to recalculate the divisor and the shift bands for the first time.

Table 2 summarizes what to check in each country before closing the 2027 budget.

What to check in the 2027 budget	Colombia	Mexico
Workweek in force in 2027	42 hours (since July 15, 2026)	46 hours (since January 1, 2027)
Does it change versus 2026?	No: 2027 brings no new step	Yes: first cut, from 48 to 46 hours
Legal protection for pay	Law 2101 bars cutting it for the reduction	A transitory article bars cutting salary or benefits
What payroll must recalculate	Nothing new if the divisor was set in July 2026	The divisor and shift bands, in force since January 1
Where the detailed calculation lives	Hourly rate and overtime in Colombia (link above)	Calendar and payroll in Mexico (link above)

If the report consolidates both payrolls into one reporting currency, the next step is to set the budget's exchange-rate assumption, not to estimate it from memory. The method (spot, recent average, implied forward, or analyst consensus, with scenarios and bands) is in budget 2027: which exchange-rate assumption to use. This article does not set any specific rate between Colombian pesos and Mexican pesos: doing so without a dated official source would be inventing a figure, exactly what that article teaches you to avoid.

What finance should check before closing the 2027 budget

A six-point review covers what usually goes wrong when a finance team treats both countries as if they shared the same calendar.

1. Confirm the actual workweek each team works in each country, not the one written in the original contract.
2. Verify that Colombia already applied the 210-hour divisor from July 2026, without assuming a further change in 2027.
3. Configure Mexico's new 46-hour divisor from January 1, 2027, with the daytime, mixed and night bands under the Federal Labor Law.
4. Separate the workweek effect from the exchange-rate effect in the budget: they are two distinct assumptions and should be documented separately.
5. Review Colombia's aggregate effect with the cost of employing in Colombia after the labor reform, which details the impact on contributions and benefits.
6. If the company also moves money between the two countries for collections or supplier payments, separate that flow from payroll. They are distinct problems, the same logic laid out in the Mexico-United States corridor, which applies equally to flows between Colombia and Mexico.

Does it help to budget both countries under one owner or under one per country?

It helps to have an owner per country who knows that country's rules, plus a consolidator who checks that nobody mixed the two calendars. The pattern across this cluster is not a calculation error inside one country. It is copying an assumption from one country into the other.

What Soulbit does today for payroll in Colombia and Mexico, and what it does not

Soulbit does not calculate workweeks, overtime, surcharges or benefits in any country, and it does not run payroll in Colombia or in Mexico. That calculation stays with the employer, its accountant or its local payroll software in each country, and Soulbit does not give labor, tax or accounting advice.

What Soulbit delivers today is the step after the calculation, with a different scope in each country. With Soulbit Salaries, a company holds a balance in stablecoins such as USDC and USDT or in fiat, and disburses payroll that has already been calculated, in batch or on a recurring schedule, with institutional custody, KYB and AML/KYT monitoring. In Colombia, that disbursement reaches Colombian bank accounts in pesos through a local bank rail. The full flow is in the batch payroll guide, from file to disbursement.

Soulbit has no local bank rail in Mexico: a company with teams in both countries handles the peso-denominated Mexican leg of payroll through another channel today, and in Mexico can use Soulbit only for stablecoin payments, for example to staff paid in digital dollars. The mobile apps and the card are not available yet in either country.