Why your haircut price is about who can hold the scissors

A barber shop sells a skilled person's minutes, so the price on the board depends on who's allowed to stand behind the chair. For the traditional Indian barber in Malaysia, that has been a government question for a long time.

The odd part is that everyone warned the price would jump. In the one place I can find a clear report, it mostly didn't, and I think that tells you more than a jump would have.

The warning

In 2019 the government said foreign hiring in hairdressing would stop from 2021.² The Malaysian Indian Hairdressing Saloon Owners Association, Mindas, did its sums out loud.

Its treasurer said, at a press conference FMT reported, that a RM10 cut could be forced up to as much as RM45. His reason was plain: "otherwise, we can't pay the rent and other utilities of the shop".²

That was a warning from people asking for something, and nobody should read it as a price. Five years on, The Star's report from George Town had a traditional cut at RM10 to RM15, and one owner there said he'd held his prices for over a decade.¹

One haircut, in ringgit

It's one town, and one reporter's check. I couldn't find a national series of haircut prices, so I can't tell you what happened in Klang or Kota Bharu.

One chair, on paper

The same report has the only pay figures I could find. One owner pays his barber RM1,500 a month, and commission takes the man over RM2,000.¹ The same owner puts the permit to hire a barber from India at around RM3,000 a year.¹

Together that's at least RM2,250 a month.¹ Say a cut is ten ringgit and the shop opens twenty-six days a month: the first nine or so heads every day go to the person holding the scissors, before any rent.

That permit works out to about an eighth of his pay. So I don't think a fee is what hurts here. What hurts is that a chair with nobody behind it earns nothing, and it still pays rent.

Mindas's treasurer gave a profit too, in 2019: RM3,000 to RM3,500 a month after salaries and other costs.² I can't check that, and I'd guess it varies a lot with the street, but it isn't a fat cushion to pay a new wage bill out of.

So where did the squeeze go?

I think it came out as fewer shops. An officer of the association told The Star that more than 30% of operators closed for good after foreign hiring was banned in 2009, and that some cut staff and shortened their hours.³

That's the association's count, given while it wanted workers, and I couldn't find a government number to set beside it. My guess is that a shop's regulars won't follow it to three times the price, so it's easier to shrink than to reprice.

Why not hire locals?

That's the obvious answer, and Mindas said in 2019 that it supported the idea. It also said it would pay RM2,000 and nobody was applying.² The officer who spoke to The Star says a barber can be fully trained in six to nine months.³

I'm of two minds. An industry saying no local wants the job, at a wage it chose, is also describing the wage. But a ten-ringgit cut can't fund a much bigger wage, so I think both sides were telling part of it.

What the 2023 change did

In September 2023 the Prime Minister partially approved foreign hiring for barbers, goldsmiths and textile shops, on condition that employers train local youths.³ It wasn't an open door.

The Vibes reported the minister's quota of 7,500 across all three trades together. For barbers, the ministry said the owner must hold a Malaysian Skills Certificate, and the number of workers follows the number of chairs.⁴

I looked for how many of those workers went to barbers, and whether the shops ever got them, and couldn't find it. Nor could I find a clear statement of where the barber quota has stood since, so treat this as the rule as announced.

Hiring also got a little dearer. Foreign workers came into EPF in October 2025, with employer and worker each paying 2%.⁵ On the wage above, the shop's share is RM40 a month, or four cuts.¹⁵

Two ways off the old board

The Star's check in George Town found many traditional barber shops now operated by foreigners, most also charging RM10 to RM15.¹ So anyone thinking of raising the price has a neighbour at the old one, whoever he is. That may do as much to hold the board down as anything else here.

The other way out is in that report too. One George Town barber charges about RM100 for a man's cut, with Japanese scissors that cost over RM3,000 a pair.¹

I doubt that's ten times the minutes. It's a customer deciding that only this particular person will do, and that's a kind of scarcity no quota hands out. If I owned a shop, that's the part I'd study, though I don't imagine many streets hold enough people who'll pay it.