The part-time permit costs AED 50. Everything written about it says AED 600 or more.

What the permit actually allows

Article 6(1)(f) of Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 defines it in two sentences, and the second one is the reason the permit exists: "This type of permit allows establishments registered with the Ministry to employ a worker under a part-time contract where his working hours or working days are less than his full-time counterparts. The worker may work for more than one employer after obtaining a permit to do so from the Ministry."

Multiple concurrent employers is the whole point, and it is conditional — the Ministry's permission is the gate. Without the permit, working a second job onshore is not a grey area; it is working without the permit the law requires for that arrangement.

The numbers, from the service page

The stated fees exclude tax and collection charges. Two lines in that table matter more than the fee. No electronic quota means a part-time hire does not consume a slot the establishment would otherwise need for a full-time recruit. No bank guarantee means the AED 3,000-per-worker guarantee that sits behind ordinary recruitment does not attach here.

Conditions and documents

The Article 7(1) conditions apply as they do to any permit — the worker must be at least 18, the occupation must be consistent with the establishment's activity, the licence must be valid and unsuspended, and the application must be filed by the establishment's legally authorised signatory. The service page adds one that decides most cases: the candidate must hold a valid residence visa. This permit does not open a residence file; it attaches part-time work to a residence someone already has.

• Colour photograph on a white background.
• Passport copy with at least six months' validity.
• The Ministry's official job offer form, signed by both parties.
• Academic certificates matching the skill level, and any professional licence the occupation requires.
• A no-objection letter from the current employer.

That last document is the practical obstacle. The Ministry's permission to hold more than one employer is not something you obtain over your existing employer's head — their letter is part of the file. Where the current employer refuses, the part-time route is closed by paperwork rather than by law, and the honest sequence is to ask before you have committed to a second role.

The formula that decides your annual leave

Article 18 of the Executive Regulation, read with Article 29(2) of the Decree-Law, does not give a part-time worker a shorter version of the standard 30 days. It gives a proportion, computed from hours:

Article 18 then fixes the inputs: actual working hours count to a maximum of eight per day; the part-time hours are the hours contracted; and the ratio is expressed as (part-time contract hours per year ÷ full-time contract hours per year) × 100. Two features are worth pausing on. The eight-hour daily cap means a compressed schedule cannot inflate the entitlement. The five-day floor means even a very light contract carries paid leave — a genuinely protective provision that almost no part-time offer letter mentions.

The formula that decides your gratuity

Part-time work accrues end-of-service benefits. Article 30 of the Executive Regulation, under Article 52 of the Decree-Law, sets the mechanism for workers "working in part-time or job-sharing types and not on a full-time basis":

So the calculation runs in two steps, and the order matters: work out the full-time gratuity first, then scale it. A worker on 20 hours against a 40-hour full-time week accrues 50% of the full-time entitlement for the same years of service. Use the gratuity calculator for the full-time figure, then apply your percentage.

Article 30(2) adds the exclusion: end-of-service benefit does not apply to temporary employment of less than one year. That is a statement about the temporary work type, not about part-time work — a part-time contract accrues from the start, proportionally.

Part-time, job sharing, flexible, remote — four different things

Article 10(4) lists six contract forms in the Ministry's system: full-time, part-time, temporary, flexible, remote and job sharing. Article 5 defines the two that are most often confused with part-time work:

• Remote work — all or part of the work performed outside the workplace with electronic communication in place of physical presence, "whether the work is part-time or full-time". Remote is about where, not how much. A full-time remote employee is not a part-time worker and needs no part-time permit.
• Job sharing — tasks divided among more than one worker as agreed in advance, reflected in each one's wages, with those workers "dealt with pursuant to the rules of part-time work". This is the sleeper: job sharing imports the part-time regime wholesale, which is why Article 30 names it alongside part-time for gratuity purposes.

Article 10(3) allows a move from one work type to another, subject to three conditions: agreement of both parties, payment of all entitlements arising from the original contract, and compliance with the Ministry's procedures. The middle one is the protection. Converting a full-time employee to part-time does not roll their accrued full-time entitlements into the new contract at the new proportion — those are settled on the old basis first.

What it looks like from the employer's side

1. Confirm the occupation matches the establishment's licensed activity — Article 7(1)(c), the condition that fails most applications.
2. Confirm the candidate holds a valid residence visa. This permit attaches to an existing residence; it does not create one.
3. Obtain the no-objection letter from their current employer before anything else. Without it the file does not proceed.
4. Issue the Ministry's official job offer form and have both parties sign it.
5. File through the authorised signatory — service centre, website, app or Tawseel. Two working days, AED 50 in federal fees, no quota consumed and no bank guarantee.
6. Contract on the part-time employment contract form, not the full-time one. The permit and the contract are separate choices and both have to be right.
7. State the contracted annual hours in the contract. Both the Article 18 leave calculation and the Article 30 gratuity calculation take that number as their numerator — an unstated figure is a dispute waiting to happen.
8. Diarise the renewal at one year, and remember Article 7(4): the Ministry may refuse renewal where the establishment is not complying with the Wage Protection System.

Sources

• Issuance of a New Work Permit — Part Time Work Permit — the service description, employers as target audience, the age and residence-visa conditions, the required documents including the no-objection letter, federal fees of AED 50, business-centre commission capped at AED 72, two working days, one-year permit duration, no bank guarantee, insurance or electronic quota, all skill levels eligible, MOHRE service page
• Cabinet Resolution No. (1) of 2022 Concerning the Executive Regulation of Federal Decree-Law No. (33) of 2021 — Article 5 on remote work and job sharing, Article 6(1)(f) defining the part-time permit and the multiple-employer permission, Article 7 on conditions and fees by permit type and establishment category, Article 10(3)–(4) on contract forms and switching work types, Article 18 on annual leave for part-time workers, Article 30 on end-of-service benefits for part-time and job-sharing workers, MOHRE, full English text (PDF)
• Federal Decree by Law No. (33) of 2021 Concerning Regulating Labour Relations and its amendments — Article 29 on annual leave, Article 52 on end-of-service benefits, MOHRE, consolidated English text (PDF)
• Work permits — the part-time permit described among the thirteen types listed by the Government, and the AED 250 to AED 3,450 range for classification-priced permits, updated 13 August 2026, u.ae, official UAE Government portal

Verified 7 September 2026. The fees, processing time, one-year duration, conditions and document list were read on the live MOHRE service page for the part-time work permit on the day of publication. The permit definition, the multiple-employer permission, the leave formula with its eight-hour cap and five-day floor, the gratuity percentage mechanism and the exclusion for temporary employment under one year are quoted or closely paraphrased from the MOHRE English text of Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022. Fee figures circulating on commercial agency pages — AED 600, AED 2,000, AED 2,500 — are not the government fee and were not used. General information, not legal advice.