Minimum Wage by State in 2026: All 50 States and DC

There is no single minimum wage in the United States. For 2026 there are 50 statewide answers, several states carrying two or three rates at once, and a layer of city and county ordinances sitting above all of it. 20 states are still at the federal $7.25 floor. 30 are above it, topping out at $17.13 in Washington, which is $9.88 an hour more than an employer pays for identical work in Alabama.

The table below is the whole picture in one place: every state, the District of Columbia, the 2026 rate, how far it sits above the federal minimum, and the notes that change the answer, meaning employer size thresholds, scheduled increases, local ordinances and tipped wage rules. Each state name links to that state's own page, which carries the statute citation and the overtime, sick leave and new hire rules that go with the wage.

Minimum wage by state in 2026

Ordered alphabetically. The rate column shows the figure exactly as published, including the states that carry more than one. A blank Notes cell means this data set records no employer size threshold, scheduled increase, local ordinance or tipped wage variation for that state; it does not mean none exists, so check the state page and the state labor department before you rely on it.

Rates are the 2026 figures this site publishes on each state page, which is the same table behind the State Compliance Checker. The consolidated federal reference is the U.S. Department of Labor state minimum wage table. Wage and hour information here is general, not legal advice.

The same 30 states, ranked highest to lowest

Alphabetical order is how you look a state up. Rate order is how you see the spread. The 30 states above the federal floor run from $17.13 down to $8.75, a gap of $8.38 an hour between two states that both consider themselves above the federal minimum.

The 20 states not in that list are all at $7.25: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Three different ways a state ends up at $7.25

Grouping the federal floor states as one block hides the thing that actually matters to an employer, which is whether a state wage law exists at all and who it covers.

No minimum wage statute: 5 states

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee have no state minimum wage law. The Fair Labor Standards Act supplies the only floor, and it reaches only covered employers and employees, generally an enterprise with $500,000 or more in annual sales or an employee engaged in interstate commerce. An employer in one of these states that falls outside FLSA coverage has no statutory wage floor at all, which is unusual enough to be worth confirming with counsel rather than assuming.

A lower state rate that federal law overrides: 3 states

Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming each keep a state minimum wage on the books that sits below the federal rate. This is what each one publishes:

• Georgia. Federal $7.25 (state rate $5.15 superseded by FLSA).
• Oklahoma. $7.25 (larger employers; $2.00 state rate otherwise, superseded by FLSA).
• Wyoming. Federal $7.25 (state rate $5.15 superseded by FLSA).

In each case the federal $7.25 is what a covered employee is actually owed, and the lower state figure only matters for the narrow set of employers federal law does not reach. Reading the state statute alone in any of these three states produces a number no covered employer may legally pay.

A state law that matches federal exactly

The remaining federal floor states legislate $7.25 themselves. That distinction is not cosmetic. A state that adopts the federal rate by reference, as Texas does, moves automatically if Congress raises the federal minimum. A state that writes $7.25 into its own statute, as Wisconsin does, does not move until its own legislature acts. If the federal rate ever changes, those two groups behave differently on the same day.

States where the rate moves on its own calendar

14 states carry a scheduled or formula driven adjustment: Alaska, California, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Most index to a consumer price measure, round to the nearest five cents, and can never go down. The practical consequence is that the announcement date, not the effective date, is the one that belongs on a payroll calendar. South Dakota, for example, publishes the following year's figure by October 15, which gives payroll ten weeks to load it.

Three of those states have a dated change already published:

• Alaska. Currently $13.00. Scheduled to rise to $14.00 on July 1, 2026.
• Florida. Currently $14.00. Rising to $15.00 on September 30, 2026 under the constitutional amendment schedule.
• Michigan. Currently $13.73. Scheduled to reach $15.00 on January 1, 2027, then formula-adjusted.

Two of those three land mid year rather than on January 1, which is the detail that catches employers who review wage rates once a year in December. A September 30 increase in Florida and a July 1 increase in Alaska both arrive in the middle of a quarter, in the middle of a pay period for most pay calendars.

States where more than one rate applies at once

Five states in the table publish something other than a single number, for two different reasons.

Geography. New York runs $17.00 in NYC, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester; $16.00 rest of state. Oregon runs $15.05 standard; $16.30 Portland metro; $14.05 non-urban counties. In both cases the correct rate depends on where the employee works, not where the business is registered, so a payroll record that carries only a company address will produce the wrong number for somebody.

Employer size or revenue. Ohio publishes $11.00 (employers grossing $405,000+; $7.25 below that). Montana allows $4.00 rate allowed for non-flsa businesses with gross annual sales of $110,000 or less. New Jersey sets $15.23 rate for employers with fewer than 6 employees and seasonal work alongside its standard rate. In total, 11 states attach a size or revenue threshold to their wage law: Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Vermont and West Virginia. Crossing a headcount threshold changes the wage floor without anything about the work changing, and it is a common source of unnoticed underpayment in a growing business.

Local ordinances above the state rate

California, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington all have cities or counties with minimums above the state rate. Many California cities set higher local minimums. Denver sets a higher local minimum. Santa Fe and Albuquerque set higher local minimums. Seattle and other cities set higher local minimums. In those states the statewide figure in the table is a floor for the state, not the number every employer in it pays.

Several states run the opposite policy and forbid it. Alabama voided local wage mandates through the Uniform Minimum Wage and Right to Work Act, and Tennessee bars a local government from requiring a private employer to pay above the federal or state minimum, whether as a condition of doing business or as a condition of a contract with that local government. Both citations sit on the Alabama and Tennessee pages.

Tipped cash wages, with the state citation

Federal law permits a $2.13 cash wage against a tip credit of up to $5.12 an hour, on the condition that cash wages plus tips reach $7.25 across the workweek and that the employer makes up any shortfall. That is the rule cited to the U.S. Department of Labor tipped wage table. States move it in both directions, and a handful change the averaging period as well.

These are the tipped figures this site holds a state level citation for. For every other state, the tipped rate is on that state's page and at the state labor department, and it is not reproduced here without a source.

Two details in that table are the ones that catch national payroll configurations. Wisconsin averages cash plus tips over the pay period rather than the workweek that federal law uses, so a tipped employee can be compliant in one framing and short in the other. South Dakota ties the tipped wage to half the state minimum, which means it moves every January without anyone amending a statute.

Which rate wins when they disagree

The Fair Labor Standards Act sets a floor, not a rate. When federal, state, county and city minimums all apply to the same hour of work, the employee is owed the highest of them. There is no averaging, no election, and no grandfathering for an employer that set the rate before an ordinance passed.

That single rule is why multi state payroll fails quietly rather than loudly. A system that stores one wage floor per employer will be right for years and then wrong the month a city ordinance takes effect, and the error surfaces as a back pay claim with interest rather than as a rejected filing. The fix is structural: the rate belongs to the work location, and it carries an effective date so it applies on the correct run rather than the one after it.

What this means for payroll operations

• Store the rate against the work location. With 4 states carrying local minimums above the state rate, and two states running geographic tiers inside the state rate itself, employer level configuration is not granular enough.
• Watch announcement dates, not effective dates. 14 states adjust by formula. The figure is usually published months before it applies, and that publication date is the payroll deadline.
• Recheck the wage floor when headcount crosses a threshold. 11 states tie coverage to employer size or revenue, so a hiring milestone can change the minimum wage owed without anything else changing.
• Treat tipped pay as a separate configuration. The cash wage, the tip credit ceiling and the averaging period are three independent variables, and states change them independently.
• Do not carry a rate you cannot cite. If nobody can name the statute or the agency page a rate came from, it is not a rate, it is a guess. That is why the District of Columbia row above shows no figure.

This is ongoing work rather than an annual project, and it is exactly what BEG managed payroll absorbs. We track the wage change in every state where a client has employees, apply it before the effective date, and keep the tipped and local configurations with it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, federal minimum wage; U.S. Department of Labor, state minimum wage table; U.S. Department of Labor, tipped minimum wage by state; South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation; Virginia Department of Labor and Industry; Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development; Kansas Department of Labor; Iowa Code 91D.1. Per-state figures and their agency citations are on each linked state page. This is general wage and hour information, not legal advice.