Kazakhstan work permits and the foreign worker quota
Last reviewed
The short answer
A work permit in Kazakhstan is issued by the local executive body to a named employer for a named worker and it is what lets that worker take up the role lawfully. Because the permit belongs to the employer rather than the worker, one that already holds permits and is applying in a region with quota headroom can put a specialist on site without the client company registering anything of its own.
Permits are drawn against an annual quota set as a percentage of the labour force. For 2026 the quota for permits issued by local executive bodies to employers is 0.3%, alongside a separate 2.85% for labour immigrants, which is a household route rather than a corporate one. Second and third category permits run twelve months and extend three times; first category permits run one, two or three years.
The published service standard for issuing a permit is nineteen working days from application and the fifteen-day labour exchange posting runs before that clock starts.
Aspirock coordinates the permit and quota sequence for deployments into Kazakhstan, runs the labour exchange posting against the project date and reports the position back before mobilisation is committed.
How does an employer get a work permit in Kazakhstan?
By searching the domestic labour market first and then applying to the local executive body, which has a published service standard of nineteen working days from the application.
- 01
Post the vacancy on the electronic labour exchange
The employer sends the vacancy details to the electronic labour exchange at enbek.kz. On the expiry of fifteen calendar days from that submission it files the permit application, quoting the publication code of the posted vacancy.
- 02
File the permit application
Through the e-government portal at egov.kz or elicense.kz, or through the migration.enbek.kz portal.
- 03
The local executive body notifies its decision
Within eight working days. The decision to issue or refuse is taken by order of the head of the local executive body within seven working days of the employer's documents being registered, which sits inside those eight working days rather than adding to them.
- 04
Pay the fee
The employer files proof of payment within ten working days of the notification of issue.
- 05
The permit is issued
One working day.
- 06
Register the contract and obtain the worker's identification number
The employment contract is registered in the unified system for recording employment contracts and the foreign worker obtains an individual identification number.
The published nineteen working days is the middle of that sequence rather than the whole of it and the arithmetic closes exactly: eight working days to notification, ten to pay the fee, one to issue. The same figure appears in the rules themselves and on the egov.kz service page. The elicense.kz portal publishes the same standard as two stages rather than a total, eight working days to the notification and eleven to the permit.
What sits outside the nineteen days is what a project timetable has to allow for. The fifteen calendar days of labour market search run before the clock starts, because the application cannot be filed until they have expired. The contract registration and the individual identification number sit on their own timetables afterwards. No authority publishes a combined figure covering the work visa alongside the permit, so that leg is planned separately rather than read off a service standard.
Every step in that sequence belongs to the employing entity rather than to the worker or to the company the work is done for. It posts the vacancy, files the application quoting the publication code, pays the fee within the ten working days and registers the contract and obtains the identification number afterwards. An employer already established in Kazakhstan runs that sequence as an employer that already meets the local-content conditions and already holds permits in the region it is applying in, so a project starts at the posting rather than at a registration.
The filing channel is worth one line of its own. The rules give the e-government route and the migration portal as alternatives rather than replacing one with the other and the instrument that governs them has been amended four times between September 2024 and May 2026, so it is worth checking against the current text rather than against a summary of it.
Which foreign nationals need a permit at all?
Those employed to work in Kazakhstan, unless they fall inside one of the categories the Government has listed as needing none. Those categories sit in an instrument of their own.
Foreign nationals work on a permit issued by the local executive body to a named employer for a named worker. Nationals of Eurasian Economic Union member states are one of the exempt categories and their exemption is confirmed twice over, by the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union and by the Government's list. They consume no quota and pay no fee and they are excluded from the foreign worker count when local content is calculated.
Because a business trip is not employment in Kazakhstan, a person travelling on business for up to a hundred and twenty calendar days in total in a calendar year is on the same list. Someone on a business trip is employed by the home entity and visiting, which is why the permit question does not arise for them at all. That is a boundary of the employment question rather than a way through it: it marks where employing in Kazakhstan starts, not a way of employing here.
Two things follow for anyone reading the rules. The first is that the exempt categories and the local-content ratios are answered by different instruments and must not be read from each other. Reading the ratio exceptions as an answer to who needs a permit produces the conclusion that staff of a ten-employee branch need no work permit and they do. The second is that where the work is employment in Kazakhstan, the permit route applies and the category, the ratio and the fee all follow from it.
For everyone inside that regime, the application is made by the employer. The category a role falls into is fixed by the role itself, against the professional standards and the qualification handbooks and it is the ratio that is measured against the applying employer's own headcount. That second half is why an employer already established in Kazakhstan can answer whether a given specialist can be placed before the role is even scoped and a company that has yet to register cannot.
How long does a permit last and what does renewal involve?
Twelve months for a specialist, extended twelve months at a time and no more than three times, which puts a ceiling of forty-eight months on one employer permit.
| Worker category | Who it covers | Permit term | Extension |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Heads and their deputies | One, two or three years on the employer's application | By one, two or three years |
| Second | Heads of structural units meeting the qualification requirements set by professional standards, the qualification handbook of positions of managers, specialists and other employees and the standard qualification characteristics | Twelve months | Twelve months at a time, no more than three times |
| Third | Specialists meeting those qualification requirements, which is where a deployed engineer sits | Twelve months | Twelve months at a time, no more than three times |
| Fourth | Skilled workers meeting the qualification requirements set by professional standards and the Unified Tariff and Qualification Handbook of Works and Occupations of Workers | Twelve months | None |
The forty-eight month figure is a ceiling on one employer permit rather than a limit on the person and it is a planning fact for any project that runs longer than four years. It is also the point at which the category question stops being administrative: a role classified into the first category runs on a different term structure entirely.
Renewal has a window rather than a deadline. An extension is applied for not earlier than sixty and not later than thirty calendar days before the permit expires, so the decision is taken while the permit still has a month to run rather than at the point it lapses. Each extension is assessed against the same local-content conditions as the original application, because a permit is issued or extended on those conditions. And the permit fee falls again each time, at the index in force on the date it is paid.
The rules also allow for a deployment that does not happen. Where the worker a permit was issued for did not arrive at the place of work, or where their employment contract was terminated, the permit may be re-issued to a different foreign worker with a new number, so a mobilisation that falls through does not necessarily cost the whole application. The replacement runs for the time left on the original rather than starting a fresh twelve months and the incoming worker has to meet the qualification requirements for the occupation.
The whole of that cycle sits with the permit holder. It carries the fee on every extension, the ratio position each extension is assessed against, and the window the extension has to be applied for in. For an employer already established in Kazakhstan that is a standing operating rhythm rather than a thing each project sets up and takes down and it is the reason a four-year deployment is a renewal schedule rather than four separate applications.
The provider
About Aspirock
Aspirock is an Employer of Record and payroll provider operating across 70+ countries from six global offices, founded on more than 22 years of operational EOR experience and supporting more than 5,000 workers. Every client works with a named account team that owns the deployment end to end, so contracts, payroll, visas, and compliance filings in each market are handled by people accountable for the outcome.
For deployments into Kazakhstan that means an employer-specific work permit drawn against the local executive body's quota with the local-content ratios met, a Kazakh employment contract registered in the unified contracts system, payroll with social tax and the contribution lines that follow the worker's residence status and the accommodation, catering and transport obligations the Labour Code places on rotational site work.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
Last reviewed
The quota is set annually as a percentage of the labour force and is split into two limbs that do different work. For 2026 it is 0.3% for permits the local executive body issues to employers and 2.85% for labour immigrants, a route confined to individuals employed in a household. A company deploying a project team sits inside the first limb only. Both figures were revised with effect from May 2026, the employer limb upward from 0.25% and the labour immigrant limb downward from 2.9%.
A permit is issued or extended where Kazakhstan citizens are at least 70% of the employer's first and second category employees and at least 90% of its third and fourth category employees. Both counts include employees of a sending party working under a personnel-supply services contract, so an employer's ratio moves with people it does not directly employ. Nationals of Eurasian Economic Union member states are not counted among foreign workers for this calculation at all.
A specialist is a third category worker and a third category permit is issued for twelve months and extended for twelve months at a time, no more than three times. That gives a ceiling of forty-eight months on one employer permit. First category permits, for heads and their deputies, run one, two or three years with extensions on the same terms. Fourth category permits, for skilled workers, run twelve months with no extension at all. An extension is applied for not earlier than sixty and not later than thirty calendar days before the permit expires.
Before applying for a permit the employer must search the domestic labour market by posting the vacancy on the electronic labour exchange at enbek.kz. Fifteen calendar days after the posting the employer files the permit application quoting the vacancy's publication code. The application is filed through the e-government portal at egov.kz or elicense.kz, or through the migration.enbek.kz portal.
The permit is obtained by the employing entity: it posts the vacancy on the electronic labour exchange for fifteen calendar days, applies to the local executive body, pays the fee within ten working days of the notification of issue, registers the employment contract in the unified contracts system and obtains the worker's individual identification number. Attracting foreign labour without that permit is an administrative offence and so is employing a worker in a post that does not match the one named in the permit. Both carry the same bands, running to 700 MRP for a large business entity and a repeat within a year of a penalty runs to 1,000 MRP. Those bands fall on whoever employs the worker, which is why the route matters: where a company deploys through an employer of record, it is that employer rather than the client that holds the permit and the exposure that comes with it.
The rules disapply the 70% and 90% conditions in five cases: small business entities with no more than twenty employees; state institutions and enterprises; a foreign worker who arrived for independent employment; permits issued within country-of-origin quotas under ratified treaties; and representative offices and branches of foreign legal entities with no more than ten employees. Separately, the local-content position for an investment priority project is determined by the interested central government bodies, in agreement with the local executive body for the territory and the migration authority. All of this disapplies the local-content conditions only. Whether a given worker needs a permit at all is a separate question, answered by the Government's own list of exempt categories.
Nationals of Eurasian Economic Union member states need no work permit to work in Kazakhstan, so they consume no quota and pay no permit fee. They are also excluded from the foreign worker count when local content in personnel is calculated, so they do not use up the 70% and 90% headroom that other foreign nationals do. Their payroll position differs too: social contributions, pension and health insurance apply to them as they do to Kazakhstan citizens, which is not the case for a third-country national temporarily staying on a work permit.
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General guidance on Kazakhstan employment rules, reviewed 6 August 2026. Rates and rules change. This is not legal or tax advice for a specific situation.