Short answer. No, not simply because money is tight. Wages must be paid at least twice a month, at intervals no longer than sixteen days. The only recognized excuse to delay is force majeure or circumstances beyond the employer's control, and even then wages must follow immediately once that has passed.
What the law says
Wages shall be paid at least once every two (2) weeks or twice a month at intervals not exceeding sixteen (16) days.
Labor Code, Article 103 — Time Of Payment. Read the full provision →
The baseline schedule the law sets
Wages must be paid at least once every two weeks or twice a month, with the gap between paydays never exceeding sixteen days. The law also fixes a floor on frequency the other direction: no employer may pay less often than once a month, no matter the arrangement. For work that cannot be finished within two weeks, and where there is no collective bargaining agreement or arbitration award covering it, payments must still come at intervals of no more than sixteen days, in proportion to the work completed, with a final settlement once the work is done.
The sixteen-day cap is a maximum, not a target: paying more often is always open to an employer. It is the spacing that catches people out. A payroll run on the 15th and the 30th keeps every gap inside the limit; one that pays on the 10th and the 30th does not, because that interval runs past sixteen days.
The one narrow exception
The law only excuses a delay when payment cannot be made on account of force majeure or circumstances beyond the employer's control. A cash flow problem caused by ordinary business decisions, slow-paying clients, poor sales, or how the business chose to manage its finances, does not fit that description. Force majeure refers to something outside the employer's control altogether, not the everyday financial pressures every business has to manage.
What happens once the excuse, if any, ends
Even where a genuine force majeure situation delays payment, the employer is not free to simply wait indefinitely. The law requires that wages be paid immediately after such force majeure or circumstances have ceased. So the exception buys time only for as long as the qualifying circumstance actually persists, and the obligation to pay resumes the moment it is over.
The excuse is about inability, not inconvenience, and it lasts only as long as the event does.
If your pay is being delayed for cash flow reasons
Since ordinary cash flow trouble does not qualify as force majeure or a circumstance beyond the employer's control, an employer citing it as a reason to withhold or push back payroll is not relying on the exception the law recognizes. Keeping track of when wages were actually due against when they were actually paid is the practical way to see how far, and how often, an employer has fallen outside the schedule the law sets.
It also helps to be clear about what this article settles. It governs when wages must be paid, not how much they must be or in what form — those are dealt with by their own provisions. So a payroll that is late breaches this rule whether or not the amount was eventually correct, and a promise to make it up with the next release does not cure the interval already missed.