Local minimum wage mandates in the U.S. 2026, by state

State minimum wage in the United States in 2026

State minimum wages in 2026 range from the federal floor of $7.25 an hour in about 19 states up to $17.95 in Washington, D.C. But the real story is local. Some cities now mandate more than $21 an hour, which is nearly three times the federal rate of $7.25.

The map of minimum wage rates in 2026 is more fragmented than ever, splitting not just by state but city by city. In 2026, state minimums span from $7.25 in about 19 states to $17.95 in Washington, D.C., while local rates in the Seattle area top $21.65 an hour.

This guide maps the state and local minimum wage in the United States in 2026, from the frozen federal floor to the highest city rates in the country. For millions of workers, the single most important wage number is no longer set in Washington but in a state capital or a city hall.

It is a system where the same job can pay $7.25 in one town and over $21 in another, with nothing but a state or city line in between. This guide ranks the state minimum wage in the United States in 2026 and maps the local city mandates that now set the highest pay floors in the country.

This is a country where the pay floor depends on your state and even your city, the patchwork we map out in our guide to the US minimum wage.

Cities lead the nation: local mandates set the highest pay floors, with Burien, Washington at about $21.78 an hour, nearly three times the federal $7.25.

Washington state cities lead the nation. Burien, Tukwila and Seattle all pay over $21, while about 25 states ban their cities from setting any local minimum at all, a divide that shapes the cost of living from one town to the next.

A quick note on the data. The figures show state and local minimum wage rates in the United States in 2026, in US dollars per hour, based on state labor agencies and city ordinances. Where state, local and federal rates differ, the highest one applies.

State labor agencies and city governments publish these rates, and multi-state employers must track every one of them.

Minimum Wage by State, Ranked

The table ranks the highest state minimum wages in 2026 against the federal floor. Washington, D.C. leads at $17.95, but no state comes close to the top local city rates, which now exceed $21 an hour.

How Does the US Minimum Wage Work?

The US minimum wage works on three levels: federal, state and local. The federal floor is $7.25 an hour, states may set more, and cities may set more still. Employers must always pay whichever of the three rates is highest. Three levels of government, three different floors, one simple rule: the highest wins.

Understanding the federal, state and local layers is the key to knowing what any given job must legally pay. Few workers realise their legal wage floor is set by three separate layers of government, each able to raise it but never lower it.

It also means an employer with staff in several cities can face several different wage floors at once, each one binding for the workers in that place.

This three-tier system is why the same job can pay wildly different amounts across the country, from $7.25 in much of the South to over $21 in the Seattle area, a spread wider than in almost any peer economy we cover in our world economy work.

Three levels, highest wins: the federal floor is $7.25, the top state rate $17.95 in D.C., and the top local rate about $21.78, and workers get the highest.

Federal law protects the higher rate: under the Fair Labor Standards Act, any state or local minimum above the federal floor stands. So a worker in a high-wage city is entitled to the city rate, not the far lower federal one.

This protection, written into federal law in 1938, is why a Seattle barista earns almost three times a Texas one. This layered design, unusual among rich economies, is what lets a single country run wage floors from $7.25 to over $21 at the same time.

Which City Has the Highest Minimum Wage?

Local mandates now set the highest wage floors in America. Burien, Washington tops the national list at about $21.78 an hour, with Tukwila close behind at $21.65, Renton at $21.57 and Seattle at $21.30, all of them well above any statewide rate in the country.

The nation's very highest pay floors are now set by small cities, not by Congress or the states. Burien, Washington leads at about $21.78, with Tukwila at $21.65, Renton at $21.57, King County at $20.82 and Seattle at $21.30.

The rise of $21-an-hour city minimums, unthinkable a decade ago, is the clearest sign of how far local policy has outrun federal law. A worker in Burien or Seattle now earns nearly three times what a worker doing the identical job earns in much of the South.

The march of city minimum wages past $21 an hour marks a decisive shift of power over pay from Washington toward city halls. A decade ago no US city paid $20 an hour as a minimum; in 2026 more than a dozen do, almost all of them clustered around Seattle and the San Francisco Bay.

These city rates, nearly three times the federal $7.25, show how far local government has moved ahead of Washington. It is a scale of pay floor unusual even among the largest economies in the world.

How far cities go above: in states that allow it, cities set rates far above the state floor, from Seattle over Washington to West Hollywood over California.

Most of the highest local rates cluster in Washington state and California, where cities index their minimums to inflation and adjust them every January. The end result is a small cluster of cities on the West Coast paying the highest legal minimum wages anywhere in the country.

These cities share a common trait: they raise their floors automatically each January in step with prices. The concentration of the very top rates in a handful of Washington and California cities makes them, in effect, the highest-wage labour markets in America.

Which States Pay the Most?

Most states now pay more than the federal floor. About 31 states and Washington, D.C. set minimums above $7.25 in 2026, while roughly 19 states still match the federal rate, chiefly across the South and parts of the Midwest. The country now splits cleanly into higher-wage coastal and northern states and a lower-wage South.

About 31 states plus Washington, D.C. now pay above the federal $7.25, while roughly 19 states, mostly in the South, still match it exactly. Whether a worker earns $7.25 or $17 now depends first on which state line they happen to live inside.

Whether a worker starts at $7.25 or $17 now comes down, first of all, to which side of a state line they happen to work on.

The states above the floor are mostly on the coasts and in the North, a geographic split that mirrors wider gaps in incomes and living costs, themes we return to in our GDP per capita analysis.

Where states pay most: Washington, D.C., Washington State, Connecticut, California and New York set the highest statewide minimum wages in 2026.

Georgia and Wyoming technically list a $5.15 minimum, below the federal rate, though the $7.25 federal floor applies to most workers there.

In practice, no state pays a legal minimum under $7.25 for covered workers, a floor still generous next to many emerging economies. The result is that the true legal floor almost everywhere is the federal $7.25, even where a lower figure sits on the books.

So while the statute books in a couple of states still show figures below $7.25, the federal floor quietly overrides them for almost every worker.

How Many California Cities Set Their Own Rate?

California has the deepest map of local wage laws. West Hollywood pays about $20.25 an hour and Emeryville $20.34, while San Francisco and Berkeley sit near $19.61 and Los Angeles at $18.42, all above the state rate of $16.90. Nowhere is the local map denser than California, where scores of cities each set their own rate.

West Hollywood sits at about $20.25, Emeryville $20.34, Mountain View $19.70, San Francisco and Berkeley near $19.61 and Los Angeles at $18.42. California's web of local ordinances is the densest in the nation, a rate for almost every sizeable city.

No other state comes close to California for the sheer number of city ordinances, which is why a business there often tracks a dozen or more local rates.

Dozens of California cities set their own minimums, part of a high-cost economy that our GDP per capita data helps put in context against the rest of the world.

A dense local map: West Hollywood, Emeryville, San Francisco, Berkeley and Los Angeles all set local rates above California's $16.90 state minimum.

The California pattern, with scores of cities each setting a local rate, makes it one of the most complex minimum wage maps in the country, and a headache for any business operating across several cities at once. For a chain operating across California, that can mean a dozen different wage floors in a single metro area.

How Many States Pay Above $7.25?

Most states now pay more than the federal floor. About 31 states and Washington, D.C. set minimums above $7.25 in 2026, while roughly 19 states still match the federal rate, chiefly across the South and parts of the Midwest. The country now splits cleanly into higher-wage coastal and northern states and a lower-wage South.

About 31 states plus Washington, D.C. now pay above the federal $7.25, while roughly 19 states, mostly in the South, still match it exactly. Whether a worker earns $7.25 or $17 now depends first on which state line they happen to live inside.

Whether a worker starts at $7.25 or $17 now comes down, first of all, to which side of a state line they happen to work on.

A coastal-inland split: about 31 states and D.C. pay above the federal floor, while roughly 19 states, mostly in the South, still match $7.25.

The split is starkly geographic. Higher minimums cluster on the coasts and across the North, while the federal $7.25 floor holds across most of the South and parts of the Midwest, tracing a divide as much political as economic.

Which States Ban Local Minimum Wages?

Not every city is free to set its own wage. About 25 states have preemption laws that bar cities and counties from setting a local minimum above the state rate, so the state floor is also the ceiling. In much of the country, a city cannot lift its own wage floor even if it wants to.

Around 25 states preempt local wage laws, while only about 14 let their cities and counties set a higher local minimum. Preemption is the quiet battleground of minimum wage policy, deciding whether a city can act at all. Where a state preempts local action, even a booming, high-cost city is locked to the statewide floor.

Preemption has become the decisive lever: it settles whether a city can raise its own floor at all, long before any vote is taken. In Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and around twenty other states, a city that wanted to lift its own wage floor simply could not, whatever its local cost of living.

The result is that identical low-wage jobs, in cities of similar size and cost, can carry very different legal wage floors purely because of state preemption law.

Preemption laws, common across the South and in states like Texas, Tennessee and Wisconsin, keep the pay floor uniform within the state. Supporters say this helps business; critics say it holds down pay, a debate that runs alongside our interest rates coverage of the wider economy.

Can a city act? about 25 states preempt local wage laws, leaving only around 14 that let their cities set a higher local minimum.

In the roughly 14 states that allow local minimums, cities have pushed rates far above the state floor. In the states that preempt them, even the largest cities are stuck at the statewide rate, whatever their local cost of living. It is a stark divide: some cities pay over $21, while others cannot legally rise above their state's floor.

That single legal question, whether a state preempts its cities, does more to shape local pay than almost any other in the minimum wage debate.

How Many States Raised Pay in 2026?

Minimum wages keep climbing. About 23 states raised their rates in 2026, many on January 1st, with several of them crossing the $15 an hour mark for the first time, including Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia and Hawaii. The floor keeps rising, and it rises fastest where cities and states tie it to inflation.

Indexing has quietly become the norm, turning annual minimum wage rises into an automatic feature of many states. Because so many rates now rise automatically with prices, the minimum wage map redraws itself a little every single January.

The 23 states that raised their rates in 2026 continued a run of increases that has lifted the typical state minimum far above the frozen federal one.

Many states now index their minimum to inflation, so the rate rises automatically each year, a mechanism that tracks the same price pressures our inflation and producer prices work follows.

Climbing every year: the highest state minimum wage has risen from around $9 in 2015 to $17.95 in 2026, while the federal floor stayed at $7.25.

Because so many states and cities index their rates, the gap over the frozen federal $7.25 widens every year, pulling the highest-wage jurisdictions further ahead while the federal floor stands still. Every year of federal inaction, in other words, widens the gap the states and cities have opened up.

The steady, automatic climb of indexed rates is the quiet engine widening the gap over the static federal floor year after year.

How Much Does the City Change Your Pay?

Where you work shapes what you earn. A full-time job pays about $15,080 a year at the federal $7.25 rate, roughly $37,300 in Washington, D.C., and about $44,300 in Seattle at $21.30 an hour. Two workers, same hours, same job, thousands of dollars apart, based on nothing but their zip code.

At $7.25 a full-time worker earns about $15,080 a year, rising to roughly $37,300 in Washington, D.C. and about $44,300 in Seattle. The size of the gap, tens of thousands of dollars a year for identical work, is a measure of how far the country has fragmented.

A worker on the federal floor grosses roughly $290 a week for full-time hours, while one on Seattle's rate grosses about $852 for the same work.

That is a difference of nearly $30,000 a year for the same full-time hours, depending only on the city, a gap that dwarfs the wage differences between many countries in our richest countries data.

Same job, different pay: a full-time worker earns about $15,080 a year at the federal rate but around $44,300 in Seattle at $21.30 an hour.

Even so, in the highest-cost cities the higher wage buys less than the raw number suggests, because rents and prices are steep. A high local minimum and a high cost of living often go hand in hand. Even so, these floors dwarf the pay of workers in economies like China and much of the developing world.

The paycheck looks bigger in Seattle, but so does the rent. Higher pay and higher costs tend to travel together, so the headline wage rarely tells the whole story of how far it stretches.

Will the Minimum Wage Map Keep Fragmenting?

The map will keep fragmenting. More cities are likely to adopt local minimums where state law allows, and indexed states will keep raising their rates, while the federal floor stays at $7.25 unless Congress acts. The direction of travel is clear even if the pace is not: up, and increasingly local.

The safest prediction is more of the same: higher local floors, a frozen federal one, and a widening gap in between. Much will hinge on whether more states repeal their preemption laws, unlocking city action, or whether the federal floor is finally lifted after so many years.

Whether more states lift their preemption laws is the key question, one tied to politics as much as economics, and it plays out against the wider policy shifts reshaping the global economy and driving new US tariffs.

High vs low-wage states: high-wage states differ sharply from federal-floor states in rate, local powers, indexing and cost of living, on an indexed scale.

For now, the trend is clear: the highest local rates keep climbing past $21, the federal floor holds at $7.25, and the gap between the best and worst-paid jurisdictions grows wider every year. The one constant is the frozen federal $7.25, now more a historical marker than a real wage floor for most workers.

Minimum Wage by State in Numbers

A few numbers frame it. State minimums run from $7.25 in about 19 states to $17.95 in Washington, D.C., while the highest local rate, in Burien, Washington, is about $21.78, nearly three times the federal floor. A handful of figures capture just how wide the pay floor now varies across America.

Behind the numbers sits a simple truth: in 2026, geography, not Congress, decides what the lowest-paid job in America is worth.

These figures matter because the minimum wage sets the income floor for millions and the cost base for employers, right down to the city level, a picture that sits alongside our regional wage and price data.

State floors and city peaks: in states that allow local wages, the top city rate sits well above the statewide minimum, especially in Washington and California.

Together they describe a country where the pay floor is no longer set in Washington but in state capitals and city halls, and where geography decides what the lowest-paid job is worth. The old idea of a single national wage floor, set in Washington and applied everywhere, no longer describes how pay is set in America.

Minimum Wage by State 2026: The Big Picture

Taken together, minimum wage rates in 2026 form a patchwork, from the federal $7.25 across much of the South to over $21 in the Seattle area, with state and local mandates driving the highest rates.

The whole spread: the pay floor runs from $7.25 federal, up to $17.95 in the top state, to about $21.78 in the highest-paying local city.

Whether the map keeps fragmenting will depend on state preemption laws and city action, but the trend toward higher local minimums looks set to continue, as our US economy coverage of jobs and pay suggests.

Frequently Asked Questions: Minimum Wage by State