Minimum Wage by State (2026)

Minimum wage by state: the complete guide

What minimum wage is

Minimum wage is the lowest hourly rate an employer may lawfully pay a covered employee for straight-time work. In the United States it exists on three overlapping layers — federal, state, and sometimes city or county — and the rule that decides your actual floor is simple: the highest applicable rate always wins. The federal floor comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 206), enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD), and it has stood at $7.25 an hour since 2009. States are free to set a higher number, and most of the country's largest states now do.

Federal vs. state vs. local, and which one wins

When more than one minimum wage law applies to the same job, the employee is entitled to whichever rate is highest, not whichever government is “in charge” of the workplace. A California retail job is covered by the FLSA (federal), the California Labor Code (state), and potentially a city ordinance (local) all at once — and the worker is owed the largest of the three.

A handful of states, including Georgia and Wyoming, still have an old state-law number below $7.25 on the books (Georgia's statute technically says $5.15). That number is legally irrelevant for the vast majority of employers, because almost every business is covered by the FLSA and the federal $7.25 floor overrides the lower state figure. Only a narrow set of employers not covered by the FLSA could ever actually pay the lower state number, so in practice these states function as $7.25 states.

Tipped wages and the tip credit

For employees who customarily receive tips — servers, bartenders, some delivery drivers — federal and most state law allow employers to pay a reduced direct cash wage and claim a tip credit for the rest, as long as the employee's tips make up the difference. The cash wage plus the tip credit must always equal at least the full minimum wage; if they do not, the employer owes the shortfall.

Some states, including California, Washington, Nevada, and Alaska, allow no tip credit at all: tipped employees there simply receive the full state minimum wage in cash on top of whatever they earn in tips. New York splits tipped rates by region and by industry (food-service vs. service-employee), which is why this calculator shows “varies by region and industry” rather than a single number for New York — the food-service rate for the NYC/Nassau/ Suffolk/Westchester tier is $11.35 cash plus a $5.65 credit, equal to that tier's $17.00 floor.

Who is exempt

The FLSA carves out several “white-collar” exemptions for executive, administrative, and professional employees who are paid a fixed salary above a federal threshold (currently $684 per week, or about $35,568 a year) and whose actual job duties meet specific tests. Outside salespeople and certain highly compensated computer professionals have their own exemption tests. Independent contractors fall outside minimum wage law entirely, but classification depends on the real nature of the working relationship — how much control the business exercises, who supplies tools and sets hours — not on what the contract calls the worker. Being paid a salary, by itself, does not create an exemption; the duties and salary-level tests both have to be met.

Scheduled increases

Minimum wage rates are rarely static. Several states in this dataset have an already-legislated increase on the calendar, and this calculator surfaces it under “scheduled increase” whenever a state record has one. Florida is the clearest example: its rate rises from $14.00 to $15.00 on September 30, 2026, the final step of a constitutional amendment voters approved in 2020, and becomes CPI-indexed every September 30 after that. New York's two tiers both move to CPI indexing starting January 1, 2027, with the $1.00 gap between the tiers staying fixed. Alaska, Michigan, and Virginia all have their own scheduled steps over the next two years. Because these dates don't all fall on January 1, it's worth rechecking your state's rate around its specific effective date, not just at the start of the calendar year.

Checking your paystub

The fastest way to verify you're being paid correctly is to do the multiplication yourself: hours worked in the pay period times the minimum wage (or your actual higher rate) should be less than or equal to the gross wages line on your paystub — not the net amount after taxes and deductions, which will always be lower.

What to do if you're underpaid

First, raise the discrepancy with your employer or payroll department in writing, since misapplied rates and clerical errors are common and are often fixed without any formal process. If that doesn't resolve it, you can file a complaint with your state labor agency — for example, California's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, New York's Department of Labor, or Colorado's Division of Labor Standards and Statistics — or with the federal U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. Both routes are free, do not require an attorney, and can result in an order for back pay covering the full shortfall, going back as far as your state's statute of limitations allows. Keep your own pay stubs and a log of hours worked; that record is often what makes or breaks a claim.

Common mistakes

Assuming the federal $7.25 rate applies everywhere. This is the single most common and most expensive mistake. Someone who assumes California pays $7.25 when it actually pays $16.90 is undercounting a 40-hour week by $386.00 — over $20,000 a year. Always check the state figure first; treat $7.25 as a floor, not a default.

Treating the tipped cash wage as the full minimum wage. A Texas server's $2.13/hr cash wage is not their minimum wage — it's a component of it. The wrong calculation stops at $2.13/hr × hours; the right one adds tips, and if the total is below $7.25/hr the employer owes the difference, as shown in the $33.60 shortfall example above.

Using New York's wrong regional tier. Applying the $16.00 rest-of-state rate to a job physically performed in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, or Westchester understates pay by $1.00/hr — $40.00/week at 40 hours. The tier follows where the work happens, not where the company is headquartered.

Missing a mid-year increase, like Florida's. Someone budgeting on Florida's $14.00 rate all year will be wrong starting September 30, 2026, when it becomes $15.00 — a $40.00/week difference at 40 hours that has nothing to do with January 1 and everything to do with Florida's own constitutional schedule.

Reference: federal floor vs. the highest state rates

Use the calculator above for the exact current rate, tipped breakdown, and next scheduled change for any of the 16 launch states; this table is a quick sanity check, not a substitute for it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between the state and federal minimum wage?

The federal minimum wage is a single floor set by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), currently $7.25 an hour, and it applies everywhere in the country. States are free to set their own minimum wage above that floor, and 12 of the 16 states this calculator covers do. When a state rate is higher than $7.25, the employer must pay the state rate; the federal number never overrides a higher state number, it only acts as a backstop where no state rate exists or where the state rate is lower.

Does my city's minimum wage override the state rate?

Yes, where a city or county has its own minimum wage ordinance, it generally applies if it is higher than the state rate, because the higher of the two floors always wins for the employee. California, Washington, Colorado, and New York all have well-known local ordinances (Seattle, Denver, Emeryville, and New York City area rates, for example) that exceed their state minimums. This calculator shows the statewide figure; always check your specific city or county before assuming the state number is your final answer.

What is a tip credit and how does it work?

A tip credit lets an employer pay a tipped employee a lower direct cash wage and count a portion of the employee's tips toward the rest of the required minimum wage. The cash wage plus the tip credit must always add up to at least the full minimum wage for that state; in Texas, for instance, $2.13 in cash plus a $5.12 tip credit equals the $7.25 floor. If an employee's actual tips in a given week are not enough to bring their total pay up to the full minimum wage, the employer is legally required to make up the difference out of pocket.

Who is exempt from minimum wage laws?

The FLSA exempts several categories of workers from its minimum wage and overtime rules, most commonly bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees who are paid on a salary basis above a set threshold (currently $684 per week federally), along with outside sales employees and certain computer professionals. Independent contractors are also outside minimum wage protection, though job titles do not decide the question; the actual working relationship does. States can layer additional or narrower exemptions on top of the federal ones, so a worker exempt federally is not automatically exempt under a stricter state law.

Why does New York have two different minimum wage rates?

New York State Labor Law Sec. 652 sets a higher minimum wage for New York City and the downstate counties of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester ($17.00/hr) than for the rest of the state ($16.00/hr), reflecting the higher cost of living in the metro area. Both tiers move together on future scheduled increases, with the one-dollar gap between them fixed going forward. Whether you use the metro or rest-of-state rate depends on where the work is physically performed, not where the employer's headquarters sits.

What should I do if my paycheck doesn't match my state's minimum wage?

Start by recalculating your gross pay yourself: multiply your hours worked by the rate this calculator shows for your state, and compare that to the gross wages line on your paystub, not the net (after-tax) amount. If there's a genuine shortfall, raise it with your employer or payroll department first, since it is sometimes a paperwork or classification error. If it isn't corrected, you can file a wage claim with your state labor agency or the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD), both of which can investigate and order back pay without requiring you to hire a lawyer first.

How often do minimum wage rates change?

Most of the 16 states in this dataset change their minimum wage on January 1, but there are important exceptions: Alaska changes on July 1, and Florida changes on September 30, following its own constitutional amendment schedule. Several states, including Colorado, Ohio, and New Jersey, adjust their rate every year based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than a fixed legislative number, so the rate can move even in years without new legislation. This calculator shows the current effective rate and any already-scheduled future increase from the record's nextChange data.

Is minimum wage the same for salaried and hourly employees?

Minimum wage law is expressed as an hourly rate, so a salaried employee's effective hourly rate (salary divided by hours actually worked) must still meet or exceed it, unless that employee is properly classified as exempt. This matters most for lower-paid salaried workers or those who regularly work long hours, because a fixed salary that looked reasonable at 40 hours a week can fall below minimum wage once it's divided across 55 or 60 actual hours. Employers cannot use a salary label alone to avoid the minimum wage floor for non-exempt employees.