What is UAE Labour Card and How to Check It

What a Labour Card Is Today

MOHRE has moved away from issuing a physical plastic card. What most people still call a “labour card” is now a digital work permit, an e-Permit PDF, tied to your Emirates ID and residency visa. Free zone employees get an equivalent document from their specific free zone authority rather than directly from MOHRE, but it serves the same function: legal proof that you’re authorized to work for a named employer in the UAE.

Your labour card or e-Permit typically shows your name, nationality, employer, establishment details, job title, and reference numbers like your work permit number and person code, along with issue and expiry dates. It doesn’t show your salary. For salary proof, you’d use your signed employment contract or your Wage Protection System payment records instead.

Employers are required to issue a labour card for a new employee within 60 days of that employee’s arrival in the UAE. Missing that window can expose the employer to fines.

Mainland vs Free Zone: Who Issues It

If you work for a mainland company, MOHRE issues and manages your labour card directly. If you work for a free zone company, JAFZA, DMCC, or any of the dozens of other UAE free zones, your work permit equivalent is issued and managed by that specific free zone authority instead, not MOHRE. The document serves the same basic purpose either way, proof of your legal right to work for that employer, but you’d check its status through the relevant free zone’s own portal rather than the MOHRE app if you’re a free zone employee.

How to Check Your Labour Card Status

You have a few options, all straightforward:

1. 1
   MOHRE app or website. Go to Services, then Enquiry Services, and enter your Work Permit Number, Emirates ID, or Person Code along with the requested verification details. Your current status displays immediately.
2. 2
   In person at a Tasheel center. If you’d rather not do this online, Tasheel centers across the UAE can look up your labour card details with your Emirates ID or work permit number.
3. 3
   Through your employer. Your HR department can usually pull your labour card details directly if you don’t have portal access yourself.

Your status will show as one of a few standard states: active, under process, expired, or cancelled. If it shows under process, your employer may still be completing paperwork on their end, which is worth following up on directly rather than assuming something’s wrong.

It’s worth checking your status periodically, not just when something feels wrong. A labour card can lapse into “expired” status without an obvious trigger event on your end, particularly if a renewal step on the employer’s side gets delayed, and catching that early is easier than untangling it after the fact.

Late Renewal Fines

If a labour card isn’t renewed on time, a fine applies. The commonly cited rate is AED 200 for each month of delay, capped at AED 2,000 total. So if renewal is 6 months late, that’s 6 × AED 200 = AED 1,200. If the delay stretches past 10 months, the fine doesn’t keep climbing, it caps at AED 2,000 regardless of how much longer the delay continues. Since this fine is typically the employer’s responsibility to avoid, a labour card sitting in “expired” status for a while is worth raising with HR promptly.

Labour Card vs MOHRE Contract: Why It Matters for Your Notice Period

This is the connection worth understanding if you’re also thinking about resignation, termination, or gratuity. Your notice period and the start date used for calculating things like gratuity eligibility are based on your MOHRE employment contract, not your labour card. UAE employment lawyers have specifically clarified this point: the labour card is a status record, but the MOHRE contract is the document that actually governs your notice obligations and service dates.

This distinction matters in practice when the two documents don’t perfectly align, for example if there’s a gap between when you started working and when your labour card was formally issued. If you’re trying to work out your notice period specifically, see our guide to the UAE notice period for the full breakdown.